


Father Figure

by BlindtoDreams



Category: Glee
Genre: Daddy Issues, Daddy Kink, Dom/sub Undertones, Infidelity, M/M, Older Man/Younger Man, Punishment, Spanking, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-06
Updated: 2012-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-04 23:03:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlindtoDreams/pseuds/BlindtoDreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paul Karofsky thought he'd done right by his son, but watched him degenerate into an unhappy thug. Blaine practically performed for his father's approval, but was given no love for his trouble.<br/>When the two meet, they inflame each other's wounds; a boy who needs a father and a father who needs a boy. A monumental lapse in judgment compels them to nurse those wounds together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  


  
For no other reason than spending the drive in each other's company, Kurt rode to the latest meeting of McKinley's PFLAG in Blaine's car.  
  
His recent return to the campus of his hometown had put a strain on the link between them. Stealing moments like this made all the difference, and even felt necessary, at times. It was a mild tug, at first, barely perceptible if one or the other was feeling confident, but on days like today, when an unexpected, out-of-sync assembly of the organization's members interrupted the weekend, it was impossible to ignore.  
  
They'd argued, in the tender and accommodating way arguments happened between them, just before leaving Kurt's house. Now, the lack of a resolution hung between them like a third wheel.  
  
Kurt was vigilant in his undertaking of Dave Karofsky as a project in redemption, and Blaine privately, perhaps even obliviously, resented that he'd be left on his own so that his boyfriend could spend time 'bettering' someone they both should've hated. What was there to resolve? Neither of them would budge.  
  
One way or another, the meeting encroached on an afternoon they would otherwise have spent together, and though neither could determine where the friction began, it was clear in the way they hung together outside the car for a tight-lipped goodbye that it was still there.  
  
"It won't take long," Kurt promised, passive and coaxing at first, trying to smooth the gravel between them. But just as Blaine was poised to relent, powerless to that particular tone, Kurt decided better of being apologetic, and declared righteously, "This is important, Blaine. You should be proud that we're making a difference, here."  
  
A ghost was hiding behind that 'we,' and when it came time for Blaine to challenge it out loud, his resolve dried up and he hid from the implications.  
  
His eyes found the ground, a gesture of submission, head nodding in pretended amicability.  
  
Kurt was aware he'd aimed too well, but he remained bristled, cat-like, in defense. He wasn't about to admit he was wrong. Instead he left a kiss on the corner of Blaine's mouth, which Blaine answered with a smile, and crossed the parking lot to the school's front entrance.  
  
Blaine leaned at the hip against his car's trunk as Kurt disappeared, watching long after there was nothing to watch.  
  
David Karofsky was becoming a rot on his relationship.  
  
He and Kurt would spend days at a time in nothing but love, limbs locked in a tangle down Kurt's couch, watching questionable sitcoms on mute and creating their own voice-overs, or trading trivialities through the phone.  
  
Moments of privacy from family and friends were coveted with such eagerness that their first kisses, whenever they were alone, began painfully, teeth colliding and skin pinching against more skin, until they found a rhythm and relaxed. It was all either of them ever wanted.  
  
Then the first and third Thursday of each month would come, Kurt would attend his PFLAG meetings, and an insecurity would begin in Blaine that he could neither articulate or ignore. He tried to reason with himself, assuming it was simple jealousy, because it felt so very similar, but even at his most honest he knew that the word fell flat.  
  
In the midst of frustrating self-analysis and the uncomfortable feeling David's name gave him every time it came up, Kurt announced that the group would be holding their first fundraiser within the next 6 weeks, and would meet today, a Sunday, to organize. A Sunday. His Sunday. Their Sunday.  
  
A Friday would've been fine - a Friday could be a movie with the boys from Dalton, or dinner in town with Mercedes and Sam. A Friday could be catching a game with Burt or Finn. Even a Saturday - Saturdays could be family time for the Hummel/Hudson clan, _or_ they might be spent with each other. Blaine could've handled losing a Saturday.  
  
Not their Sunday. They had a _tradition_ of Sundays. While the rest of the world ran last-minute errands before the week began, Kurt and Blaine met early in the day, drank coffee all morning and walked circles around Kurt's rural town. They teased each other's tastes in clothing or read poetry aloud with ludicrous accents at Barnes  & Noble. Sundays belonged to them.  
  
"It's one Sunday," Kurt told him at first, patiently.  
  
Then, later, when Blaine couldn't shake the dismay, it was, "Your problem isn't that I'm going, is it? It's who else will be there." And this wasn't patient at all, but sharp and sour, a tone from Kurt he'd heard used on others a thousand times, but that rarely visited him.  
  
He'd answered simply but with characteristic honesty, "It's not unreasonable for me to dislike him."  
  
"You have to be kidding me," Kurt had answered back. He said it with more disappointment than upset, but it hurt worse for its weakness.  
  
Blaine wanted to explain it to him, that Kurt was just _like_ this, sometimes - he fell in love immediately, for instance, and Blaine took months to get comfortable. It was part of the fundamental difference between them.  
  
Kurt could change on a whim, and hold dearly to convictions that were brand new, while Blaine was still struggling to be certain that each new development worked with his mind's existing landscape.  
  
He wasn't ready to believe that Dave was a changed kid, even if Kurt had already decided it was so. He might've been calmer, and he might've been inspired by extenuating circumstances not to be violent any longer, but it wasn't enough to convince him that the current wasn't still running just beneath the surface.  
  
As long as Kurt spent time around him, Blaine worried - worried that an off-handed comment on a bad day might make him snap, and how.  
  
A car door slamming shut from two rows over pulled him from his mindless lack of action. He turned to the sight of a slump-shouldered David Karofsky, talking lowly with his father. A cold, cold feeling crept through Blaine.  
  
His father. A bully's father. The man who'd raised another man and let him turn into a delinquent. Kurt had mentioned Paul Karofsky to him once or twice - the conversations in Figgins's office, the explanations he gave for his son's behavior, the agreeable remorse.  
  
Even from here, a few yards away, Blaine could see the expressions that moved across Mr. Karofsky's face as he talked to his son - each of them strained, each of them caring. Whether he felt shame at his son's actions, pride at their momentary lapse or fear for his future, he cared. It was all Blaine could see. His own dad's face occurred to him like a week-old dream, and he ached.  
  
Whether he was motivated to approach as Dave made his way across the parking lot by that particular ache, or by the frustration of an argument with Kurt, Blaine didn't give himself a chance to determine. Rather than strap himself into the driver's seat and head into town to find a way to entertain himself for 90 minutes, he found his feet disobedient and brazen, treading over painted white lines on their way to Paul Karofsky.  
  
"You look familiar," he lied when he approached the man, who'd just opened his door to leave.  
  
Paul gestured with his chin at Dave, who slipped through McKinley's entrance and was gone.  
  
"Dave's father, Paul Karofsky." He extended his hand with the fluidity of someone who'd done so a thousand times before; his face was a stone, his body still, only the fingers moved.  
  
Blaine introduced himself with a first name, nothing more, then included a pointed, "Ah."  
  
Paul was sensitive to the sound, or to the quick twitch at Blaine's brow that suggested disdain.  
  
"Not a friend of yours, then."  
  
"Not a friend of anybody _I_ know." Blaine chastised himself privately for the disrespect, but didn't amend it. And he refused to call David a friend of Kurt's.  
  
"I'm sorry to hear that," Paul returned, distracted, half-aware. He eyed the door again, watching the spot his son had just flooded, as if he'd still be there to study and observe.  
  
Blaine's rebellious alter ego, the unhealthy little twinge inside him that refused to be silenced by propriety, asked without warning, "Do you buy this? This change in him, 'the new Dave?'"  
  
Paul's shift when he answered wasn't a physical one, but something in his demeanor hit a roadblock and turned back.  
  
"I have to." He started a second sentence that hung thick on his mouth. At the last second, he changed his mind, and repeated with a painful simplicity, "I have to. He's my son."  
  
Blaine tasted envy. Without warning, without meaning to, he hated David more than ever.  
  
"Fair enough."  
  
"You don't, then? Don't, uh - 'buy it?'"  
  
"I'd like to, I just don't think it happens that quickly. Apparently I'm the only one." Sarcasm burned from Blaine, and he twisted his lip into a derisive sneer that suited his eager features not at all.  
  
"You seem to have more than a bit of hostility towards me," Paul announced, aware of Blaine's anger as he'd be of a sudden downpour, but unmoved by it.  
  
Blaine's tongue was a hard thing to hold, these days - was Kurt unraveling him, unpinning the little ribbons that kept him mannered and in control? His confidence had become verbal, it had lost its sense of play.  
  
"I just don't like your son."  
  
Paul looked toward the road nearby, watching cars as they passed, and slid his hands into his pockets. It was a tick, by now - he might as well have kept his courage in those pockets, for as often as his fingers found them when he felt tense.  
  
"That seems to be a popular feeling at McKinley these days."  
  
The vulnerability in the gesture made Blaine regret his lapse in tact. Here was a man whose son caused the people around him nothing but upset, and he seemed, if anything, resigned to it, ruefully accepting. With a teenager's naivety, Blaine tried to imagine Paul's position. Did he still love Dave? Was he concerned about him, as he seemed to be, or did he punish him behind closed doors? Did he blame himself? He couldn't help comparing Paul with his own father, remote and stony, and the similarities between them were slight at best.  
  
In deciding that Paul's defeated acceptance was a kind of familial loyalty, Blaine became bitterly jealous. He'd been a _good_ kid, damnit, and his father slipped further and further from him every year. What had David done right that he'd done so wrong?  
  
"I shouldn't have said that," he confessed after a beat. "I'm sorry."  
  
"So am I," Paul said. "He was a good boy, you know. I still have faith in that side of him."  
  


"I'll believe it if it lasts, I guess," was the best Blaine could muster, watching the cars pass by with Paul. He shouldn't have come over here. It hurt, and the moment felt far away from him - one of those conversations adults were meant to have in a low voice two rooms away when they thought you were sleeping. Not right in front of you. Not _with_ you.  
  
Paul changed, then, a sad, solitary man no more, looking Blaine's veiled dismissal dead in the eye. He was confident, certain - Blaine could've sworn he looked taller.  
  
"Blaine? That was your name, right? Blaine, I'd like to take a walk, if you don't mind. I don't want there to be any misconception, here - what David did is inexcusable. I don't understand it, I don't condone it. But there _is_ more to him. Would you walk with me for a while, hear me out?"  
  
"I don't mean to be difficult, but I'm not the best candidate for long, educational talks about the secret wonders of Dave Karofsky."  
  
"A few minutes of your time. I've heard just about everyone's side of the story, so far, and I'd like the chance to reciprocate - just once. Even if it doesn't change anything. And if I'm not entirely off the mark, here, you've got more than an old anger staked in your feelings about him." His voice broke upward, leading, encouraging, feeling around between the lines of Blaine's refusal to consider, looking for the soft spot where he guessed it became more personal.  
  
Blaine was powerless to the intrusion. He agreed with a half-hearted lift of his shoulder, a gesture his friends recognized as playful and all-welcoming, but was paler and less significant, here. Paul lead with his hands still pocketed, chest out and his steps measured; he directed Blaine's attention like an employer as they moved away from the parking lot, the older man explaining, the younger man raptly attentive.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before taking a look at Blaine's perception of Dave, I want to assure that there isn't a single character on Glee that I hate or can't see the good in. When I write a character's opinion of another character, it genuinely has nothing to do with personal bias - sometimes, it's the exact opposite of what I believe, myself. I am not my characters.

Of the hour and a half that Paul Karofsky and Blaine Anderson circled the McKinley High parking lot, waiting for the meeting to disperse, they spent less than 20 minutes focused on Dave. Paul's sullied delight in his son's precious childhood, though not at all what Blaine had imagined, remained of little interest to him. If anything, it was all the more frustrating that Dave had been raised by a perfectly decent man and still turned into an aggressive thug that pushed smaller boys around when he was mad at himself. Was a good family supporting his every move not enough?

His mother was gone, but "gone," in this case, meant living in a two-story townhouse less than ten miles away. Dave spent weekends there during the school year, and now that summer was approaching, Paul and his ex-wife, Diane, shared a civil custody arrangement of two weeks on, two weeks off.  
  
These nuggets of information did nothing but draw Blaine deeper into his sudden upset, his blind, hot envy. Discomfort pulsed out of him like a second step. He began reacting to each of Paul's sentences with uncharacteristic bluntness and derisive snorts, if anything at all, shaking his head from time to time, looking disrupted and faraway.  
  
Paul took notice. He asked almost without expecting an answer, "Something else going on with you, kid?"  
  
It was all the incentive Blaine needed to push Dave from the conversation. Driven to impropriety by the nearness of a man who looked like everything his father wasn't, Blaine began to talk. They circled the building, Paul leading by a step, Blaine gesturing in frustration beside him, and he talked. Perhaps a bit too much, perhaps a bit too personally, but Paul never objected. He simply listened, expression neutral, to stories of rejection and obliviousness, to attempts Blaine made that were either ignored or derided, to attempts his father made that Blaine always saw through to the point of awkwardness.  
  
To start with, Aaron Anderson wasn't exactly a musical man. He had little patience for anything that he considered to be frivolity. Blaine's interest in drama and the arts was only another childish _thing_ Aaron couldn't relate to or understand. When their distance from one another concerned Aaron (as it did, from time to time), his proud personality and disdain for youthful endeavors demanded that he attempt to make amends by introducing Blaine to something _he_ liked, rather than the other way around.  
  
When these experiments failed, Aaron would decide cooly, out loud, "You see? You're never willing to meet halfway. I don't know what you want from me."  
  
As a result, Blaine eventually stopped admitting to his disinterest, naively certain that having something in common (even something pretended) might ignite the connection between them that other fathers  & sons were practically flaunting.  
  
Little by little, Blaine built up a second skin of compliance. He faked his enthusiasm, faked his eagerness to participate. He tested his ability to be an actor whenever his father was around, forcing his way into an appreciation for things such as modern art, classic cars and epic television documentaries - things Aaron loved.  
  
He asked questions about Aaron's prized collection of single malt scotches, learned the difference between a $30.00 lighter from his grandfather's cigar shop and the $150.00 lighter Blaine's mother bought from Nieman Marcus (one was 'reliable,' the other 'unnecessary'), and listened without so much as a yawn to Aaron's warnings about young, dumb men buying stocks and old, overconfident men planning poorly for their retirement.  
  
Aaron was full of opinions. He dissected the world through his cynicism and built compartments for every human type he found. He had a name for everything, and an immediate understanding of whether or not a person he'd just met would be of any use to him in the future. It was, to a child's eye, something admirable. All Blaine needed was to suggest the right topic, and Aaron would answer him in ever-more-lengthy bouts of verbal passion.  
  
And although it was a constant strain to perform that often, Blaine rested easier for his success at it. By his 15th birthday, they were finally having conversations. He'd ask Aaron what he thought of something, Aaron would tell him, and Blaine would study whatever it was that his response favored.  
  
"I preferred pre-code Hollywood, to be frank," Aaron once said.  
  
That became a week-long journey through the bowels of the internet for Blaine to unearth a handful of titles they could watch together, some to greater success than others.  
  
The phrase, "I might be coming around to Apple products," sent Blaine on an eager dive into PC magazines and Apple support forums to understand updated versions, common glitches and potential improvements.  
  
Aaron could talk, Blaine could listen, and as long as only one of them was going through the motions, everything would be fine. They'd already developed a more substantial relationship, no matter how rocky the beginning, and they could both be at peace with that until it came more naturally.  
  
Eighteen months, Blaine lived in that state of euphoria. Eighteen months of the two of them, talking, laughing, leaving the house on modest adventures. Eighteen months of success, until a spontaneous boyhood dishonesty dismantled the fairytale.  
  
Blaine wasn't an underhanded child. He rarely lied and almost never acted out. But now and again, just for the rush of it, he'd listen in on the muted talks of grownups - find out what he was getting for Christmas, or how his father's date with a coworker went - anything an adult wouldn't want to tell him outright. It was one of those rare delights that came of knowing he could be caught and punished; a troublemaker's habit leftover from a childhood entirely too mannered.  
  
The conversation burned with tension from the kitchen entrance, a door and a hallway away from where Blaine crept, ears alerted to the sound of his father's indecisive anger. He wavered, he was stammering, he began sentences and discarded them like broken glass, dangerous and offensive. Blaine's stomach churned with guilt and a giddy anxiety - it'd be a good one to spy on. He heard 'Laura' from his father's mouth - aunt Laura, his mother's sister.  
  
Angela Anderson lived with aunt Laura, now - she'd lived there for nearly five years, somewhere in Michigan. They called themselves "separated," refusing to divorce, refusing to be married.  
  
The fractured couple spoke about important things directly only now, after more than a year of Laura's patient message-relaying between them, but when it came to day-to-day issues, when Aaron had to navigate his unexpected domesticity with a full-time job, it was still Laura who came to his aid.  
  
The tradition was stuck firmly into their family dynamic since the brief, uncomfortable era during which Angela and Aaron could only communicate via legal representation, but Aaron still needed to know which was Blaine's current dentist and who to call when he wouldn't make it to school.  
  
Blaine neared the kitchen on stealthy, socked feet, one side of his face aimed at the wall. He stopped when his hand touched the decorative molding - out of sight, but near enough for clarity.  
  
Regret crawled up to meet him the very minute he could piece the words together.  
  
"I'm running out of ideas, do you-- can you appreciate that? I'm out of ideas. I don't know what to _do_ with this kid anymore - he's always around, always underfoot, he asks me question after question about _nothing_ , and what do I say to him? What am I supposed to say?"  
  
For a minute, Blaine argued with himself that it wasn't as bad as it sounded, and he was helped to that conclusion by the stress in Aaron's voice. It was a misunderstanding, taken out of context. Something was bothering him, he was moody, it would pass.  
  
But he didn't keep listening to prove himself right. He kept listening because he couldn't move. He'd been cemented to the spot by a blend of disappointment and humiliation, realizing how much of the past 18 months had been approached with only one side's enthusiasm.  
  
Aaron was quiet for a moment, then demanded, "What's that supposed to mean?" Another silence. Then, "I told you, I'm out of ideas. I _told_ you. I don't know what to do."  
  
Blaine knew in his bones how Laura answered.  
  
 _"Just love him."_  
  
He knew. He could nearly hear it, he could see her, faded blonde hair and just a little too much makeup she didn't need, _"Just love him."_  
  
"What if I don't? I don't think it's supposed to be like this, Laura. I don't think it's supposed to be this hard."  
  
A pause.  
  
"No, I know it's . . . I'm just lost, here. I really am. I hate myself for it, I promise I do, but I'm no father. I wasn't cut out to be anybody's father."  
  
A low, wild hum started in Blaine's ears, worked through him, left him shuddering. He recognized it later as panic, a fresh kind of panic, not at all like what he'd felt watching those ancient horror films, not at all like the feeling of falling off a bicycle, no.  
  
This was the kind of panic that spread slow and grew, malignant, the kind that followed news of a lover dying, silence where there should've been sound. He wanted to enter the room and be reassuring, tell Aaron that he _was_ a father, a good father, that these things took time and they were making such progress! Instead he went rigid, listening longer, swamped with guilt.  
  
Aaron continued.  
  
"It was different with Angela. He was born, she loved him, and that's just how it was. I went to work, she took care of the kid. Now she's gone, and he's here, and what do I do? I look at him, I look at that face, I know what he wants and I can't give it to him. He just wants a dad, Laura. He wants a dad who loves him, who understands him."  
  
Aaron wasn't trying to be cruel. It was worse that way. If there'd been even a hint of malice in his voice, Blaine could've hated him for being a lousy parent, could've called him a monster later in life to soothe the ache that began right then and never left for even a minute.  
  
Instead, all he heard was the shame and regret of a man who'd tried for years to love his son and failed. He was too old to believe at the surface that he was to blame, but too young and insecure not to let the doubt in, not to wonder somewhere soft and needing what it was he'd fucked up as a boy to drive his parents off.  
  
He left the hall, wrongly aware, too aware of what discontent it would cause Aaron to know he'd been heard. He had his own guilt to grapple with. It had never occurred to him to back off, to approach with more subtlety, he'd thrown himself at Aaron like a lovesick dog. _Pathetic,_ he told himself later, _ridiculous._  
  
Blaine let their hobbies fade week by week, released his hold on the time they spent together, and father  & son went their separate ways at length - sharing a house, nothing more.  
  
He said as much to Paul a year later, self-deprecating yet sincere, trying as he often did to deflect and invite at once; _hear me,_ he urged, _but please, please don't see me._  
  
It was unexpected, probably inappropriate, but that was the progression they followed from the initial effort to realize Dave's hidden virtues. Blaine needed to talk, and Paul needed someone to listen to, he _needed_ someone to trust him, to rely, even just a little, on what he had to offer. He'd envisioned fatherhood with such pride and anxiety, with never any doubt about whether or not he was up to the task. Dave slipping so deep, so quickly, it had leveled him inside, microscopic explosions taking apart the structure of his confidence piece by piece. He needed a lost boy, like Blaine.  
  
Blaine's retelling of his faulty childhood was delivered with such withdrawn modesty that Paul wondered if his young friend thought it'd be an inconvenience to hear. He interjected rarely, thoughtfully, never offering advice except that he continue speaking. But when they returned for the third time to the car they'd started off from over an hour ago, Paul stopped him short, commanded his attention with the touch of two fingertips on his sweatered shoulder.  
  
"I don't have the luxury of pretending I understand what it means to be the perfect father. I want to tell you what you need to hear - that it isn't your fault, that it's his problem, that the two of you consider therapy, even, or that you live with your mother. Something. But at this point, even _my_ faith is shaken in my ability to resolve conflict."  
  
Blaine dismissed the effort with a wave and jerk of his head.  
  
"It's fine. I don't know what I was hoping to get from spitting all that out, anyway. It's just been on my mind."  
  
Paul shook his head.  
  
"No, I'm not saying I'll forget about it. Your situation is unfair, and you need an ally. That, I can handle. That, I know how to be."  
  
The fingers that asked for Blaine's focus drifted to a gray suit pocket, then returned with a card case. He isolated a single slip and, before giving himself a moment to question his judgment, to consider the possible consequences, offered it to Blaine.  
  
"So if you need to talk to someone, even if it's to say the same things you said today, you call me."  
  
"What about--,"  
  
"Just call me. If you need to. Even if I never hear from you again, I'll feel better knowing you've got an option besides handling it on your own. Kids aren't supposed to have to handle things like this on their own."  
  
 _He doesn't deserve you as a father,_ Blaine thought, accepting the card and looking up to the school's entrance. The meeting wasn't over yet, but it would be soon, and he wanted to be back in his own car and far from anywhere Dave might be before then.  
  
"Thank you."  
  
He'd never do it. He knew he'd never do it. He'd never call Paul Karofsky to "talk."


	3. Chapter 3

"Let me guess," Blaine said into the mouthpiece of his cell-phone, substituting the bet for a proper hello. "Catastrophe has struck, and you need a rain check?'"   
  
His voice was amicable but burnt underneath; he joked without humor. By now he knew what to expect when Kurt's number blinked on the home screen an hour before they were supposed to meet. A few months ago, it would've been a last-minute coquetry - he'd once texted to say, 'Just making sure you didn't get swept off your feet by one of these smooth Ohio playboys before I drive all the way over.'  
  
Kurt was out of breath even before he started talking - he'd been preparing for this, stomach in knots, loathe to disappoint Blaine again.  "I'm sorry."  
  
He echoed the apology in sarcasm, mocking its frequent use; their voices said the words together.   
  
"And what disasters will my favorite philanthropist be correcting today?" Blaine transitioned easily back to flirtation - it was, as romance went, the one area he knew how to visit comfortably, without giving too much away.   
  
Nevermind that it meant he and Kurt had regressed back to a place where he felt the need to restrain himself.  
  
Kurt made a hard sound in his throat at the question - disgusted, outraged. He was ready to tell the story.  
  
"We were _finished._ Everything was ready to go. Fliers were up, the room was rented, my prize tables were meticulously organized, I worked _magic._ And then," a dramatic pause; Blaine could picture him waving his hands as a prop to frame the new obstacle. "The cousin - Figgins's cousin, the photographer slash notary slash candle maker slash basketcase backed out on us! I said, 'fine, we just won't have professional pictures, it's not the end of the world,' right? But Figgins said --"  
  
A static rushed into Blaine that drowned out the sound of Kurt's voice. He couldn't bring himself to listen, no matter how earnest the attempt. He already knew what Kurt would say, and he knew it was all true: a typo snuck through on the flyer, there was a complication with the dining space, a local business sponsor backed out, a wayward photographer needed to be replaced at the last second. Whatever. Whatever it was this time. Blaine only knew that each fresh upset meant another dead date, another heartfelt promise to "make it up" to him.

He would, too. Kurt kept those particular promises.   
  
But guilty as it made him, Blaine was tired of things being made up to him. It wasn't intentional, he fought the frustration whenever he could, but it won. It won out every time. He couldn't help but realize that Kurt's original motivation for starting the club was David, he couldn't help knowing that David often joined Kurt on these expeditions to hold the fundraiser together (along with other members), and most damningly, he couldn't help seeing where he'd been ranked. Kurt's eventual comfort meant so little, these days.  
  
Higher notes in Kurt's voice snapped him back to the conversation in time to catch, "-- and just between you and me, I question her ability to raise an additional $200 by honorable means, so I'd avoid calling a phone sex hotline in the near future, just in case."  
  
They laughed together. Blaine loved that sound. He let himself be warmed by it, closed his eyes, took a breath. He had a role to play. Another performance waiting. He pulled on the suit of Understanding, Supportive Boyfriend, and told Kurt genuinely, "It's alright. Call me if you get things settled early, otherwise, I'll see you Sunday?"  
  
"Sunday," Kurt answered, in the tone of an oath being taken. "I swear, I won't make a habit of this."  
  
 _You already have._ "I know, it's fine. I've decided to love you anyway."  
  
"I love you, too - you're the best!" The assurance was followed by a cracking quiet. He'd already hung up.  
  
Blaine waited five minutes before dialing Paul's number - the third time in the month since they'd met.


	4. Chapter 4

Blaine barely thought of Kurt, leaving the house. Jealousy and bitterness, potency diminished by living with them for so long, were nothing more than polite traveling companions in the car with him. What Kurt had done to upset him became less and less important - what mattered, now, was talking to Paul about it, and Paul’s cell went straight to voicemail.  
  
He was supposed to forget about that phone number. Paul didn't know him, he wasn't his father, he wasn't a friend. He was a strange man in a school parking lot connected to Blaine by nothing more than his relation to another teen, one Blaine disliked, and there was no reason to trust his support. If anything, Blaine should've reacted to Paul's concern with caution and mistrust. In fact, that's precisely how he did react. He accepted Paul's business card to be polite, but meant to throw it away the minute he got home.  
  
The first call came only after a dozen little grievances started sticking together inside him, building up, protruding like bone into the places he needed in order to breathe. It was a fit, plain and simple. He called Paul that night because he was having a fit.  
  
Worse yet, the call helped. Paul was insightful and patient. He prompted Blaine to yell if he needed to, think a minute if he needed to, even cry if he needed to, and if Blaine did none of these things, Paul filled the silence with a warm, confident voice and the kind of paternal reassurance that felt like salve to a sunburn at the time.  
  
Blaine growing dependent on the salve was accidental, but inevitable.  
  
They'd been in contact since, rarely on the phone, but at least five times weekly through email, where Blaine found himself more eloquent and less in need, able occasionally to reciprocate the willingness to listen that Paul was so generous with.  
  
Somewhere in the tangle of their communication, Paul told Blaine what he did for a living - City Auditor, a career Blaine had to plug into Google before he could claim he understood it. The functions of his job, however, weren't immediately important. What mattered was that Blaine knew the address of his office, and a drive downtown sounded more rewarding than a night spent waiting for Kurt to call back.  
  
City buildings didn't impress Blaine anymore. Aaron's business brought the family to them often. But they did continue to intimidate him, no matter how many times he walked their fluorescent hallways. The utilitarian furnishings, the sense of isolation, the color schemes that you didn't notice were colors at first, they all made him feel intrusive and dull.  
  
It was wide and brick brown, like most city buildings, with windows rimmed in black that reflected the street, and like most city buildings, Paul was not the only one with an office inside. Departments of various local significance were spread across each level, and every hallway was hive-active with the sounds of keyboards, telephones, footsteps and polite chatter.   
  
Suddenly aware of and awkward about his age, Blaine scanned a series of plaques, signs and suite numbers until he found the right floor, the fourth floor, and came face to face with a middle-aged receptionist, bespectacled, slim-boned and smiling pleasantly at him as he stepped off a blessedly empty elevator.   
  
“May I help you?”   
  
“Paul Karofsky?” Hearing himself say the name outloud grounded Blaine to his actions - it occurred to him like a nightmare's memory that this might not have been a good idea. He knew how it felt to be in the way, and it wasn’t a sensation he wanted to experience through Paul.  
  
The receptionist’s eye went to what Blaine guessed was a schedule, scanning for the time and finding he had nothing planned.  
  
"Do you have an appointment?"  
  
Panic itched in his throat. Of course he'd need an appointment to see him. He wasn't Paul the Penpal to these people, he was the city's auditor. What was he doing here in the first place? So Paul hadn't answered the phone, what sort of response was driving halfway across town to interrupt a person whose job actually mattered?  
  
This was a sign. This was a second chance - he didn't need to go in. He'd take the elevator back downstairs, get in his car, and hope to God Paul didn't happen to look out the window as he cleared the parking lot. He was being given an opportunity to avoid humiliation. Life was rarely that kind, and he wasn’t about to take it for granted.  
  
All he needed was a lie. A way to politely remove himself from the situation with Paul's receptionist that incriminated neither of them, that looked harmless and accidental.   
  
He was still reaching for a solution when she prompted him, a little less convivially, “Sir? Do you have an appointment?”  
  
A stupid boy he’d never met borrowed his mouth to blurt, “No, it’s - his son, I’m his son.”   
  
_What the fuck are you thinking? _  
  
It was too late for damage control - her expression’s sharpness had already melted into a curious but fond recognition. She knew after a year of daily pleasantries that Paul had a son, but she’d never met him, and she didn’t make much study of the small cluster of pictures on his office shelves.  
  
She moved around the desk to be closer to him, and he had no choice but to absorb her, let her fuss at his visit, steal interest and excitement from her that was meant for someone else.  
  
“Oh, his son! You must be David.”   
  
“That’s me,” Blaine said, and accepted her hand. She didn’t want to shake - instead she laced their fingers and covered his knuckles with her free hand, cocooning him; this was a woman who enjoyed children, who had teens of her own, who understood the loss, the loving nostalgia. ‘ _Paul’s son_ _._ ’ That meant something to her.   
  
“You’re such a sweetheart to drop in on your papa like this, I bet it’ll make his day. I’ll just let him know you’re here.”   
  
Humiliation churned in his belly, and Blaine no longer wanted Paul’s comfort, company or advice. What he wanted was to run out of the building, sneak out an open window, melt into himself and disappear. He wanted anything but to go in Paul’s office, show him the laughable ruse he’d inadvertently concocted, and watch him react to it. With o option to avoid it, however, he steadied himself as best he knew how to endure disaster while the woman slipped behind a tall black door to announce him.  __

_Get this over with_ ,  he commanded mutely, _and leave as quickly as possible_. He was angrier at himself for his abysmal lapse in judgment than he was at Kurt for standing him up again. That was a dead issue. What mattered, now, was protecting Paul’s image of him, and not looking like a fool.  
  
“Come on in,” the receptionist beckoned.   
  
The process of comprehension across Paul’s face when Blaine stepped into his office was drawn out like a strand of taffy. It stretched and buckled, it dragged miserably, changing shapes, unstable. Blaine could hardly look him in the eye. He’d expected to see Dave. Blaine couldn’t handle the disappointment that he wasn’t Dave.   
  
“Thank you, Mrs. Hayes,” Paul told his receptionist. She left smiling.   
  
“It was an accident,” Blaine explained, a bullet-quick punch of assurance propelled out by the sound of the door closing.   
  
Tension slid across their skins while Paul analysed the situation. He knew that Blaine’s farce was some kind of violation, and a dire one, but he wasn't angry - not genuinely. Try as he might, it just wouldn't come. He felt exposed, instead. Blaine represented something to his coworkers that Paul wanted, instinctively and without knowing why, to guard, to keep hidden. He was uncomfortable and affronted, but not exactly mad. The confusion, that’s what he was mad about, that’s what stirred him up. What was this, what kind of game?   
  
"You told her you were my son," he challenged. In the end, it didn't matter whether or not he was angry, only that Blaine thought he was, to avoid a similar situation arising in the future.   
  
Blaine nodded and hoped to look ashamed, but Paul in front of him was pure relief. "I did, but-"  
  
" _Why_?”   
  
“It just kind of came out when she asked if I had an appointment, it was an accident.”  
  
“All it would've taken is _one_ visit from David in the past for her to know you were lying. What position would I have been in if that were the case? And what if he comes  _now_ , tomorrow, next month? She will remember what you look like. She’ll expect him to look like you!"  
  
"You're mad," Blaine offered uselessly, cheeks prickling red.  
  
"This is my  _office_. These people are a part of my daily professional life. You've thoughtlessly put me into a position with them which necessitates lying! What conclusion are they to reach if it comes out that a young man visits me at work, pretending to be my son?"  
  
With nothing to say that could correct the mess he’d made, Blaine was left to shrivel up under the seer of conflict between them. Paul had never been upset with him. He didn't know how to behave in the face of his disappointment, and he didn’t know why it mattered so, so desperately. Disappointing Aaron hadn’t hurt like this in a long while, even disappointing Kurt was easier to cope with.    
  
He apologized like a deathbed confession, coughing out  I'm sorry , low and awkward.  
  
"Why did you do it?" Why’s were important to Paul. He’d _ become_ that word to Blaine, he defined it. When they wrote each other, when Blaine confessed to some guarded unpleasantness in him, he could count on Paul’s response to challenge its origin, to ask him ‘why.’ He could count on being held to that challenge, pressed to ‘do the work,’ to excavate himself for solutions.   
  
There was nothing to dig for, this time. Kurt’s neglect was too stupid a thing to be upset about, it weakened in comparison to letting Paul down, being the part of his day that went wrong. He couldn't say it, not with Paul looking at him that way, expecting a worthy excuse. It was indefensible. What was he doing here?  Cold palms and a fat, useless tongue, that's all he was made of.  
  
Paul's voice was every father that ever lived. "Answer me."  
  
And so did Blaine become every son, even Paul's, even here. "It's - I don't know anymore. I don't know, I was upset. I was really upset, and I tried to call, but I guess you were busy. It makes sense," he amended, laughing with force, stamping it out, trying to erase his humiliation with falsified mirth, “because you're at work. I'm sorry, Paul."  
  
"What were you upset about?"  
  
Blaine wanted to hate him. It would've been easier to understand, easier to act on. Who paused himself in the middle of such justified anger to ask a question like that? The man was an idiot.  
  
"What does it matter?" A bitter little burn, a judgment.  
  
"You drove all the way over here, you disrupted my office, you made me party to a lie that I’ll have to carry for as long as Mrs. Hayes is my receptionist. You tell me. You tell me what upset you enough to justify all of that."  
  
"I don't  _know_ , I  _said_. I was just in a bad mood and I overreacted. It won't happen again, it's never happened before. I don’t know what else to say."  
  
“Then we’re going to be here awhile.”   
  
_Asshole_. Paul insisted on hearing Blaine admit his childishness out loud. It wasn’t enough that standing in his office was proof, that he was a living monument to his own stupidity. Paul had to have details. Blaine wanted so much to _ hate_ him.   
  
He tried to answer with his frustration, with the grit-rough resentment bubbling up under the surface. He tried to dole out pieces of the truth in spurts and half-sentences; considered making something up, considered walking out altogether, considered taking refuge in that childishness, nesting inside it like an injured animal and saying ‘none of your business,’ but it all fell short. These weren’t emotions he was used to handling for prolonged periods. They were flash floods, they were kitchen fires, they were accidents.  
  
What he knew how to work with were the blue pieces, the aftermath. The frightened, the sad, the hopeful, the reflective. He could hold those quiet things in his hand for hours, for days, he could swing them between his fingers, manipulate them with the skills of a juggler. He could balance them above his head, biding time, until they broke apart and rained on him, and he’d have to reset.  
  
That frustration, that resentment, they cobbled together in him and mutated, and though he began agitated and cagey, throwing up his arms in defeat, he was something else altogether when he collapsed into the chair opposite Paul’s desk - more passive, more pleading.   
  
"I just," a weak start, hands limping into a gesture that meant nothing, voice a series of wet cracks, "I don't know what I do, I just. People can be around me and then they can't, it's out of nowhere, but it always happens. They always want something else."  
  
Moisture gathered at the rims of Blaine’s eyelids, tightening, pooling, spilling over, though he made no noise, and tried even now to appear composed. “I want to be good enough,” he concluded, “for someone. For  anyone .”   
  
Paul watched the boy pick himself apart like an addict digging at old sores, but did not intervene until he cried. Everything else he saw, he saw in suspension. He had just enough time in the blank, confused moment before it happened to consider what he'd brought on himself by offering his support to a strange boy in a high school parking lot.  No good deed, he thought, but then Blaine’s eyes went bright and glassy, and Paul closed the space between them with no further consideration.  
  
His fingertips landed first on Blaine's shoulder, where the reaction of muscles untightening was obvious, intense. They pushed across the fabric there, a dull, disarming mauve, and learned without trying what his naked neck felt like in hand.   
  
"Hey," he said, attempting distraction, a negotiator's urge in him treating Blaine like a man on a ledge. "Hey, it's alright.”  
  
Blaine felt the resistance of weight in himself when Paul's touch of reassurance turned to one of command. He directed him out of the chair with a tug and into his arms, just like that. It was that simple. He stood him up, hugged him close, clapped his hand across his back and shushed him quietly. “Sh, it’s alright, son, it’s alright.”   
  
It was only a turn of phrase, a pleasantry. Men called younger men ‘son’ in every imaginable social scenario, and ‘son’ meant the same hollow thing to them as ‘sport’ or ‘champ’ or ‘tiger.’ None of that mattered to Blaine. He didn’t think, in the hot, cramped experience of Paul’s affection, about how many other peers he’d said the word to. He didn’t think of how often Dave must have heard it, or how those were the ones that counted. He thought, instead, of architecture - the flaws in his foundation, the inconsistencies, the cracks. He thought of Paul propping him, an unexpected source of support, he thought of Aaron.   
  
He thought of how it  should’ve  been Aaron,  Aaron’s affection,  Aaron’s arms holding him together, and how Aaron was the root that grew recklessly into him, strangling his self-control. His relationship was in trouble and he wanted a dad to offer him guidance.   
  
He thought, one layer underneath it all, of the smell of Paul’s cologne.   
  
After much too long, Blaine pressed a limp, phlegmy chuckle into the suit fabric against his face, trying to dispel the weight of the moment. He couldn’t sustain that kind of unhappiness in front of another person for long - it didn’t fit. He was supposed to be better than this.   
  
He stood himself upright out of Paul’s touch and wiped both hands over his eyes, forcing second laugh, one of jovial self-admonishment. “I’m on fire today, really.”   
  
Paul adjusted in unnecessary ways, tugging his jacket, shifting his wrinkled red tie. Neither of them could explain why the hug was too much, why they shouldn’t have indulged, but it was a mutual understanding that made communication all the more difficult in an encounter already fraught with poor verbal choices.  
  
Finding neutrality was a dire need - Paul couldn’t function like this. He had a responsibility to be the adult, to be wiser, more reliable, more level-headed.   
  
They were both waging war against themselves, against compulsion, to be the characters other people knew them as.   
  
“You and Kurt, you had a fight?”   
  
“Not exactly. It’s not even fighting, I would prefer fighting. He just doesn’t show up - we make plans and he finds something more important to do, and when he’s with me, he’s bored. I don’t understand how we even got here from where we were a few months ago.” He shrugged, hands hidden in his pockets. His body language wanted him to care less than he did. “I was looking forward to seeing him tonight, you know? The whole thing is just insulting.”   
  
“I agree. It’s no way to treat a person, particularly one you’re romantically involved with. But it’s . . . not the first time we’ve discussed it.”   
  
Blaine heard what Paul wasn’t saying loud and clear - he’d already acted as a sounding wall about Kurt’s fickle focus, he told Blaine what he  wanted to hear days ago, weeks ago. All that was left was the ugly stuff, the truth, what he  needed to hear.  
  
“I guess I thought if I gave it time - he’s planning this big event, right? Of course he’s going to be busy.”  
  
“Sure, that’s reasonable. You can’t always control your circumstances when other people are involved, and if you plan to be with this boy for the long term, you’re both going to need to be patient when the other is involved in something you aren’t. Still.”   
  
“So I was right, then. I should just be patient. Wait it out.”   
  
Even as he said it, it seemed to scratch at his throat. He didn’t want to be patient, and he was doing a bad job of it to begin with.   
  
Paul’s hesitant, warning groan of his name in reply, ‘ _Blaine_ ,’ the way he’d have said it if he were a physician relaying bad news, actually gave him hope. If Paul didn’t want him to be patient, that meant something.   
  
“I shouldn’t be patient?”   
  
“No, I’m not - I’m not telling you that you shouldn’t be patient, I’m saying . . . I’m saying that I’ve been married, Blaine. I was married for years to a decent and accommodating woman, and she gave me all the patience in the world to focus more on my job than on her. I found ways to make time for my colleagues, I found ways to make time for my son. But I got used to her being there, being patient. I took advantage. I’m saying that sometimes these things are out of your hands, and sometimes you’re making a choice.”   
  
“And his choice is to choose a fundraiser over me.”   
  
“Maybe, maybe not. It’s possible that he’s doing all he can to balance relationship with responsibility, and that you need to cut him a little more slack. But it’s also possible that one matters more to him than the other.”  
  
Blaine had spent days at the door of the same possibility, afraid to cross its threshold, torturing himself with what might lay in the numb, nameless space beyond, but hearing it from someone else made him retreat, favoring denial. Call it stubbornness or love or need, call it the power of safe and comfortable things. Whatever it was, he couldn’t control it. He wanted Kurt, he wanted Kurt to want him back. Simplest thing in the world.   
  
All that was standing in the way was Paul’s son. Blaine wasn’t prepared to accept that, with Dave out of the picture, another complication shaped just like him might appear.  
  
“I don’t think that’s it. I don’t know what it is.”   
  
Liar.  
  
Paul didn’t press. He’d been hearing variations of the same injury for weeks; anything bothering Blaine that didn’t come back to Aaron, came back to Kurt. He was convinced that Kurt had been Blaine’s first confidant, that losing the lover also meant losing the friend, and he didn’t know how to exist without both.  
  
“Then I think,” Paul offered gently, “that he’s the one you should be talking to. This one won’t resolve itself by having a conversation with me. You keep letting it happen, it’s going to keep happening.”   
  
Talking to Kurt wasn’t an option. Since the soft, inefficient argument they’d had in the parking lot that day, Blaine was tight-lipped about the things that upset him. He didn’t want Kurt to know the depth of his pettiness and insecurity. Faking a smile for weeks wouldn’t segue easily into sudden honesty. It was too big a risk.   
  
So he lied. It left his stomach oily with guilt, but he lied to Paul. “I will. I’ll talk to him.”   
  
Paul smiled at Blaine’s compliance and knocked his shoulder with a fist; they were stabilizing, both wearing hesitant half-grins, as if they’d come through the other side of some intense negotiation. “Good boy. You’ll feel better when it’s done with, whatever the outcome.”   
  
“Yeah, you’re right. You’re right, I will. And I am sorry about this, about coming here. First and last time.”   
  
Nothing left but to leave. He pressed his arms against his sides and dipped a bit as if to say, ‘well, this is me, nothing I can do about it,’ and turned to go.  
  
His named reached after him as he opened the door, "Blaine?," a way for Paul to touch him from across the room. "I'd like to talk to you soon, and not hear that you spent all night by the telephone waiting for someone else to decide when you could be happy."  
  
Something simplistic and hopeless in Blaine registered the quick beat of silence that followed as 'meaningful.' Then Paul prompted, "Okay?" 

Blaine answered with a smile and a nod of his head. That was the image he wanted to leave Paul with - a quiet, respectful young man who could take direction.  
  



	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings necessary for this chapter: substance abuse/drug use, underage drinking . . . Warbler dog piles. Think that about covers it (except possibly, maybe a trigger warning for brief ableist language).

Later, Blaine would recognize the self-destructive urge that motivated him when he started dialing numbers after leaving Paul’s office. It _appeared_ innocent at the time, self-deception at its finest: his boyfriend blew him off, but it was still a Friday night. Why shouldn't he find something fun to do? Why not belatedly agree to attend a harmless summer party with his classmates and their friends? That’s what Paul was recommending, after all.  
  
But buried in the brutally honest little core of him, Blaine knew that he was going because of who else would be there – boys like him, privileged and well-educated, but easily bored – and the likelihood that one or two of them would supply a bottle of wine, a bag of weed, or a flask stolen from the decorative bars of one of the estates belonging to Dalton parents. He wanted to dull his pettiness, blunt the sensation of losing one man's attention and alienating another from him, however minutely.  
  
He wanted an excuse not to be sober.  
  
Three hours later, music thudded wildly through the cement bones of Jonah Crane's basement, and Blaine was surrounded by familiar faces; schoolmates and their boyfriends, girlfriends, best friends.The wet, wooden smell of marijuana drifted over him and then away again. Amber liquids tipped awkwardly into coffee mugs. A pair of girls Blaine didn't know experimented with a small square of paper and stimulants stolen from somebody's medicine cabinet, respectively.  
  
He neither minded nor participated, a neutral observer - he avoided anything medicinal that could addict him, and rejected anything that could kill. Even in recklessness, he retained a bit of maturity, try as he had in the past to drink it dead.  
  
But he did share a joint puff-for-puff with another Warbler, and mix himself shot after shot of Amaretto sours - equal parts sweetness & sting. Paul mentioned them in passing, once. He told Blaine via email that his day at work 'called for a few'. That was precious information. It was a revealing of the personality underneath.  
  
"Where's your Siamese twin tonight?," Trent asked, dancing one beat off the music nearby.   
  
"Something came up," Blaine answered.  
  
"Again?"  
  
"Again. It's fine, it gave me a free night to spend with you guys." His mood was delicate. He didn't want to dwell on the subject.  
  
A boy he'd met twice put a hand on his shoulder, dramatic in pretended sympathy; a consolation for the grieving. "Can't keep 'em satisfied, huh? All those smooth moves gone to waste."  
  
Blaine showed a smile that was only half-forced. He was starting to unwind. It mattered less and less. The kinks were straightening with each inhale, disappearing with each exhale. Besides, these boys weren't used to seeing him sensitive. They knew him only by charm, only by the costume. They expected banter, retort, brotherly battles of words.  
  
He dropped his head back against the crest of the chair and gloated obscenely, "I keep them _very_ satisfied. For all you know, he needed a night to recover."  
  
The good-natured laughter of misbehaving men peppered the space around him. Deflect, retreat. They'd slap his shoulder for the naughty implications as surely as if he'd been any one of them professing their prowess with a woman, and move on.  
  
But a joke set free was hard to contain, and when he was ready to change the subject, someone suggested getting Kurt on the phone, to tell him what he was missing, and that they were missing him. Drunk, oblivious support echoed through the small crowd around Blaine, who shook his head but could not stop his throat from spitting out giggles. Horror became humor with the proper application of alcohol and pot.  
  
Because he looked happy, because he felt happy, they thought he _was_ happy, and they pressed on. Lowered inhibitions meant overripe senses of humor. Blaine was helpless against the current of their delight.  
  
Jeff, who crept up from behind, dove his arm into the space between Blaine's leg and the chair, reaching for the phone in his pocket.  
  
"Courtesy call sounds good."  
  
Blaine answered with a bright, boyish sound, rolling in to pin Jeff by the elbow and initiating a wrestle that was assisted (in Jeff's favor) by Nick's playful hands. Between the two of them, Jeff was able to hook the cell phone with his fingers and slip it out of the tangle of limbs. He went through the motions of dialing a number, though his fingers never touched a key, then he pressed it to his ear with one hip thrust out.  
  
"Kurt!," he barked, straightening his back and adopting an authoritarian strut. "You have abandoned the sorry specimen of Blaine Anderson one time too many. He's half a man by now, and not the good half. How do you defend this neglect?"  
  
"Dick, give it back," Blaine ordered, smile fat and fully formed on his face as he swatted at Nick's attempts to overtake him. Neither boy would let the other have a victory, even when the item they'd been grappling over was gone.  
  
Jeff continued, pausing as if another voice were on the line. He covered the mouthpiece and relayed to Blaine, "He says it's the hair, The Ross Gellar look is over. He's sorry you had to find out this way."  
  
Blaine faked dismay, crowing frantically, "He said he liked my hair for who it was!"  
  
For a minute, even with his name such a fixture in the conversation, Blaine wasn't troubled by the frayed connection between he and Kurt. Drunkenness danced in him, blotting out unpleasant thoughts and flushing him clean, a boy at a party with friends, nothing more. He was fine. Simply, calmly, serenely fine.  
  
Jeff didn't have it in him to be cruel. He just hit too near to the injury, that was all. He couldn't have known how Blaine's face would change, how it would _warp_ like that, how it wouldn't be fine anymore when he purred into the phone at his imaginary Kurt and said, "Oh, you've got another man, is that a fact?"  
  
It was supposed to be a joke - harmless as the others - and Blaine had been so animated in playing along until then. But Jeff took note of the change in his demeanor, dark and miserable as it became, and he wasn't alone. Nick let his hands drop from where they clamped around Blaine's elbows to keep him still, Wes put his soda down a few feet away, gaze suddenly rapt. Trent sent helpless glances between them, unsure what changed, hoping to read what he needed in their faces.  
  
Blaine stood up from under Nick without explaining the downturn, one palm out, briefly oblivious to the questioning stares. His phone was returned in guilty silence. It relieved him at first to be back in control, but relief ran fast when he appraised the damage his upset had done. Of all the many bodies clustered in sub-groups or dancing in the center of the basement, the five around Blaine were the only ones gone still. Even the music felt like it had been sucked of its spirit.  
  
He had to fix this. He had to make it alright. Either that, or be responsible for ruining their evening. 

It was doable. With a little bit if maneuvering, Blaine swore, he'd turn it back around and sweep this untidy moment out of the room. Invoking a voice that trembled with exaggeration, Blaine laid a hand across his chest and told Jeff in a tone of conspiracy, "I know what's going on, here." Jeff's expression twisted into confusion, which was Blaine's cue to continue, high-pitched, "It's  you. _You're_ the other man!"  
  
Thankfully, Jeff was an easy target, one who abhorred somber conversation. He came back with a great, ridiculous grin, head cocked as if he'd known it for a ruse all along, and shoved Blaine at the shoulder.  
  
"Look at me, man," he concluded boastfully. "You knew the risks."

Tension left them a heartbeat at a time, pushed away in the short silence between songs on Jonah's stereo. Wes was the last to succumb. He was looking Blaine over like an antique for hidden cracks, but he, too, fell victim to the strong beat and alluring conversations cropping up again beside him.  
  
Blaine could relax for his effort, could focus on the scorch of marijuana at the back of his throat, the loose, irregular awareness of blood moving through him. He could focus on the dismissal of Kurt and Dave's burgeoning relationship, he could exorcise the wraith of it from him, banish it. He moved back into the crowd to dance, stick-limbed and graceless, full of smoke and alcohol.  
  
Before the party began, Blaine could see the two of them in his mind, Dave and Kurt. Awkward, anxious, moving near each other, stumbling into a kiss that turned passionate and breaking apart with a smile. Now, disconnected from the ache, flinging his head from side to side and cheering at anyone close enough to hear him, he couldn't see Kurt or Dave at all.  
  
What was Dave Karofsky anyway, what? Silly little thug, that was all, big brain-dead bully, he was nothing. He'd stay right where he was all his life, whether or not his behavior improved, and Blaine decided through the fog of confused substance that he simply didn't care. Forget him.  
  
But _Paul_. Poor Paul. Proud, perfect Paul who adored his son, yet listened, permissive, whenever Blaine slipped up and insulted him during their phone calls. It wasn't right. He'd been taking advantage of how good a listener Paul was. He needed to tell him -  it's all okay, now, I'm not even angry about it. I'm not.  
  
He staggered away from the circle of carpet where he'd been dancing, pulled the phone back out from his pocket and scrolled straight by three missed text notifications to highlight Paul's number and hit send.  
  
Paul answered on the fifth ring, and Blaine felt a thrill deep into his bones when he did, because he said his name, he knew who was calling. "Blaine?," he asked, followed immediately by, "You okay?" A thrill deep, deep, _deep_ into his bones.  
  
"Hey," he chirped into the phone, "Hey, Paul - Paul, old pal. Pallywag." Because he thought he was clever, Blaine went silent except for a wheezing, hysterical laugh. He tried in earnest to recover, but it was a struggle. "I thought you should know it's fine now, everything. I'm fine with Dave, I'm not - I'm fine."  
  
Paul's voice was humorless and tired. "Start over," he demanded, devoid of charm.  
  
"I'd love to," Blaine replied with a scatter of laughter. "Man, I would _love_ to. Maybe not from the  beginning beginning, but close. Maybe, like, before I made an ass of myself with my dad, or before I met Kurt. You know, if I hadn't met Kurt, I wouldn't even know you? I wouldn't know you, and I wouldn't know your son. Who, by the way, has a habit of fucking things up even when he's not _there_. But it's okay. I don't care anymore. And I thought that you should know."  
  
Belatedly, Blaine realized he was swearing, and laughed again, coming apart at the seams, dislodged from himself.  
  
Paul sighed on the other end of the line. Blaine could picture him in that moment. He'd be lying in bed, an early night for someone so very responsible, and he'd be dragging one of those wide, well-groomed hands across his face, peppered with evening's stubble.  
  
"I get it," Paul said after a minute. "I get it, you're drunk."  
  
"I'm a little drunk."  
  
"Very rebellious of you."  
  
Blaine missed the sarcasm.  
  
"Thank you!"  
  
Before Paul could chastise the faulty translation, he heard a rustling, a series of snorts and chuckles, then Blaine crying with mirth, ' _everyone wants my phone tonight_! '  
  
A new voice came on the line, lighter, even more disrupted by teenage experimentation.  
  
"He's more than just _drunk_ , the little scamp," the voice said, theatrical by nature and covering Blaine's excited squeals with a false accent. It didn't matter that he didn't know who he was talking to.  
  
Paul sat up in bed, broken from his disappointed drowsiness by the implications. Sneaking a few beers from the fridge was one thing. Drugs were something else entirely, a more troubling prospect if he wasn't somewhere safe. He couldn't be sure that's what the kid meant, but as a father, it was his first instinct to assume.  
  
"What does that mean?"  
  
The voice dodged his question and continued, overjoyed, "Frankly, Mr. So-and-so, we're all a little dismayed by this wild streak. We are young, upstanding and impressionable boys. We can't be mixed in with this kind of negative element."  
  
Paul snapped his fingers for the boy's attention, but the effect was somewhat less commanding when nobody could see it.  
  
"Focus, answer me - where are you calling from?"  
    
Another scramble of bodies sent a static crash through the phone line before he heard Blaine again, but he was distracted by the phony fight and too entertained to talk.  
  
Under any other circumstance, it might have made Paul smile. Blaine sounded happy. The sound was new to him, alien, intriguing. It would've been the best he'd ever sounded had Paul not known its derivation.  
  
When Blaine remembered Paul hanging on the other end, the first thing he said was, "He didn't mean that," sparing not even a moment's apology for the disrespect and, instead, dragging him into the conversations of foolish teenagers. "They love me, really. Wild streak and all."  
  
Paul's humor was a pit of sand to start with, dry and gritty, he laughed at things that left others feeling scraped and conflicted. Now it was nothing at all, an absence replaced by paternity's stern upset. "Listen to me, Blaine. I want your attention, I want _all_ of your attention. You _listen_ to me, or I'm hanging up this phone, and it will be the last time we speak to one another."  
  
The threat dropped cold into Blaine's stomach and flowered from there, refining his focus and inspiring a burnt and bitter fear. It should not have mattered so much. He knew instantly that it should not have mattered so much. His obedience to Paul was based on nothing but a frantic desperation to remain in his favor; that wasn't okay.  
  
"I'm listening to you, Paul. I always do. I always listen to you." It was important that he not laugh again, but it bubbled up behind his mouth, a nervous energy he wanted to expel.  
  
"'I understand' is plenty."  
  
"I understand."  
  
"Tell me where you are. I'm coming to get you."


	6. Chapter 6

They traveled nearly a mile before either of them spoke. Blaine's forehead was pressed against the cold glass of the passenger window so hard it seemed he wanted to break out and tumble onto the road. Paul was expressing his disapproval with two tight fists on the wheel and the rapid blinking that often warned of his sour moods just before they landed.  
  
"What happened, here?" Paul asked, fixed on the white lines passing, voice flat. "I was under the impression that you were a smart kid."  
  
Blaine shot out a sigh and curled deeper into the seat, hoping to sound dismissive and casual.  
  
"I needed to relax."  
  
"Not good enough."  
  
Blaine could've given a dozen excuses for why he'd used so cliche an escape, could've drawn up the list at a moment's notice and reminded Paul of the cracks that were appearing in his life's porcelain surface, but Paul knew them as well as he did, and wasn't asking him to explain the  want.  
  
He was asking him to explain the action - the way he coped with the cracks. Blaine was too smart to think that Paul wondered what upset him. He wanted him to explain why he chose a coward’s way of dealing with it.

The feeling of failure was fresh and alive in Paul, who badly needed an answer to analyze. Blaine couldn't hear the question aching in him as he drove,  _why didn't you talk to me, why not call me, why do this instead?_ Another young boy his guidance wasn't saving. Why?  
  
When it was clear he wouldn’t be given a more sensible defense, when no balm came to soothe how responsible he felt the transgression, Paul confessed, "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed in you.”  
  
Blaine’s answer was blanched and toneless. He'd been sucker-punched by the sentiment.  
  
"Please don't say that." He couldn't take it, not from Paul.  
  
But he was resisting his sensitivity for Blaine, trying to disguise the irrational depth of his concern as fury instead.  
  
"What do you expect me to say? Well done, you've embarrassed yourself, getting high at a party like some irresponsible frat boy, and calling me in the middle of the night to brag about it. I have a  job, Blaine, do you understand that? I have to be up for work in three hours, and you’ve already disrupted me at the office one time too many."  
  
"I get it, okay? I messed up, I get it. I haven't exactly relished these experiences, Paul. But I'm still me. None of this is going to become a habit, it was just a bad day. I wasn't thinking clearly."  
  
"How good of you to admit."  
  
Blaine kicked his foot against the floormat of Paul's SUV and gestured with a frustrated hand.   
  
"Come  _on_ , don't you think you're overreacting even a little? I didn't shoot heroin, I didn't drive drunk, I didn't hurt anyone. Greater crimes have been committed than a joint and a badly timed phone call, okay? Get off it."  
  
With fingers poised to dial numbers into his GPS, Paul questioned abruptly, annoyed, "Where do you live?"  
  
Blaine's face became a blurred panic, washed in the mud of expiring drunkenness.  
  
"I can't go  _home_. Jesus, I'd be dead before I hit the stairs." It was hyperbole at best, but the truth was just as upsetting. He'd be chastised, for certain, singed by the scorn of an intimidating parent, but after that. . . what? 'Grounded,' perhaps, isolated, ignored - punishments seemed only another way of getting Blaine busy with himself, somewhere nobody had to pay him any mind.  It hadn't occurred to him when Paul picked him up that he'd be sent back to his own stifling bedroom, that he'd have to come down from an evening by substance onto a bed of chill, lonely reality. He'd have hung up the phone when Paul asked how to find him, though where he _expected_ they were going, he couldn't say.  
  
He said again, "I'm not going home. Drop me off somewhere."  
  
Paul was exasperated, expression full of dark, twisted branches, hidden in his wrinkles, reaching; he couldn't be serious. This wasn't the Blaine he knew, and he was impatient with the dimwitted doppelganger.  
  
"And a martyr, no less - absolutely. I'll drop you off on a street corner, how does that sound? Maybe I'll even wait until it starts _ raining_, would that complete the picture? Christ, Blaine!"

Blaine burned with embarrassment from the passenger seat, eyes shining while judgment fell on him. Something sticky leftover in his blood was preventing his natural transition back to performance. He was too many things at once, his responses were unpredictable. If he couldn't fix this, if he couldn't make it right like he had with his friends, like he had with Kurt, then Paul would walk away upset with him, and that was an intolerable thought. But no matter how he struggled, the right words to say were too quick to catch; he was too tired to act. He was too tired to act like anything but the faulty, failed boy that he was.

For the second time in 24 hours, he had to tell Paul, "I don't know what else to say. I'm sorry. That's it." He slumped back down, hand at his temple, withdrawing. "I just can't go home."  
  
Even before he offered, Paul knew it was a bad idea. He was too angry, too emotional - Blaine's behavior wasn't supposed to be of any consequence to him, and that was getting harder to insist. Becoming any more invested in his well-being was a bad, bad, bad idea.  
  
He said it anyway, as much a surprise to himself as to Blaine, and he was tense from the neck down as he spoke.  
  
"Fine. You'll come home with me and sober up. I'll drive you back to your car first thing in the morning - first thing in the morning, Blaine. I can't  stress to you how serious I am. As for explaining to your father why you didn't come home last night, you're on your own, but at least you won't show up stoned and reeking of whatever you drank."  
 _  
I drank what you drink. And I felt a little closer to you for it._  
  
"I'd rather not. I'm in no mood to have a sleepover with your son."   
  
"He's with his mother."  
  
Silence settled between them, Paul's resolved and unflinching, Blaine's anxious and consumptive.  
  
Paul's house, the two of them - they'd be alone. A heat stirred in Blaine,  stirred , kicking up between his ribs the sick-sweet sensation he got when he saw Kurt unexpectedly in the beginning of their relationship. It was a feeling that didn't belong in this car.  
  
It was a feeling that followed him all the way to Paul's dark driveway.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fresh warnings abound! Dubious consent! Semi-sexual relations between a grown-ass man and a minor! Spanking! Sneaky daddy kink! Questionable decisions made by adults who should damned well know better! Just head in with your eyes open. =D

Blue was the primary color in Paul's house.  
  
His sofas were navy, dark and inviting, and the curtains were just a gesture lighter. Indigo pottery populated a tier of shelves in the corner. Nighttime deepened his crisp white paint until it, too, appeared blue, and when Paul turned on a single kitchen light, separated from the living room by a retaining wall, it looked to Blaine as if the sun were coming up across a flat span of desert.  
  
Paul left him to wait in that room for what felt like days. When they first left the car, he told Blaine that he would go into the kitchen until he could "deal with" him again, that when he returned he would find the Blaine he'd met at McKinley.  
  
 _I want nothing more to do with this one_ , he told him. _We will be civil, we will be mature._  
  
Photos arranged in a tidy semi-circle on the entertainment center drew Blaine close as if by possession in the interim. He watched a couple's growth one frame at a time; Paul and his fiancée, a woman with a simple face and a brilliant smile, young and in love. Next, Paul and his pregnant wife, overwhelmed but eager. Then the family portraits: Paul and his son's mother, holding a thick, pink baby between them, dark gums cracked open in a smile.

Their unity was visible even to Blaine, to whom they were all strangers, and who wanted pointedly not to notice it.  
  
That unity eventually dissolved. As the collection stumbled along, the woman ghosted herself out of the triad, a mother-memory. Her eyebrows and olive coloring were reflected in Dave's growing face, but she was nowhere to be found.  
  
When Paul emerged from the kitchen, glass of water in hand, Blaine was eye-to-eye with a shot of his boyfriend's former tormentor with a trophy, grinning hungrily, full of ambition.  
  
"That was before high school," Paul said. Even from so many feet away, even in shadow, he knew which picture Blaine was holding. By what? By the frame? Had he looked at it that many times, proud and overcome?  
  
He walked the glass to Blaine, traded him objects, then nestled the picture back where it belonged.  
  
 _Sorry for disturbing your little shrine._ "I wonder why every father wants a son who plays sports."  
  
Paul appeared to take offense, but it burnt out quickly. He couldn't exactly deny having been an enthusiastic, sport-supportive parent.  
  
"I don't know. I wasn't even a sportsman myself. I guess I just liked to see him win."  
  
"But it started somewhere," Blaine challenged, narrowing an eye in benign, playful accusation. "Something told you to get him into it."  
  
All at once and over nothing, Paul was happy. Blaine thought for a minute that he could take the credit - maybe his intoxication made him more charming, or, at the very least, easier to laugh at. But the older man's eyes were distracted, now, glazed over and dipping into wrinkles at their creases.  
  
He was thinking about Dave.  
  
"No," Paul said, in another world, an involved first-time father with a small, perfect child to show for all of the effort it took. "No, I remember. It was actually all him, all David. 3rd grade, for him, or the summer just after. Some of the neighborhood kids were putting together this . . . you know, this raggedy little team to 'play' football."  
  
Blaine wanted to interrupt and put a stop to the reverie. Words burned on his tongue, throbbing over the worn out taste of alcohol, but Paul was barely aware of his presence in the room.  
  
"I took him to his first game," Paul continued. "They were all meeting at the park a few blocks down from our apartment, our first place together after we had him, and I walked him there. I walked him, just the two of us, and I watched the whole thing. That entire 3-hour trainwreck of a game. They had no idea what they were doing, but by god, they were enthusiastic about it."  
  
Blaine's stomach turned. He wanted out of this conversation.  
  
"And there was David," Paul said, hands up to position his mind's image, all the dreamy affection of fatherhood in his voice, "Wearing a jersey just a bit too big for him and stopping every few minutes to make sure I was still there, right? Once, just once, he made something like a touchdown, and instead of celebrating with the other kids, he ran right over to me. You've never seen a kid so excited, so proud of himself. I guess I was proud, too. After that, I couldn't help it. Just, anything to make him look as happy as he looked at that moment, all the time."  
  
It took a long, quiet while for Paul to realize that he'd spoken in error, but even when he saw the drop on Blaine's sleepy face, he couldn't have apologized - he couldn't pretend to love his son any less.  
  
He imagined this was precisely why Blaine was suffering. It didn't matter how old he was, how logical the comfort Paul gave him, or what kind of positive influences he formed outside the house. He focused too often on what his father wasn't, on the irrevocable truth that his childhood was over and couldn’t be amended for.  
  
"It wouldn't have mattered, you know," he assured him.  
  
The suddenness of Paul’s attention was discomfiting. Blaine tried to accommodate for it, shifting his shoulders and rocking his weight from one foot to the other.  
  
"What wouldn't have mattered?"  
  
"You. You wanting to play sports, if you'd wanted to play sports. It wouldn't have mattered. It wouldn't have made your dad a different man."  
  
Blaine scanned the shelf of family photos again and shrugged, pretending Paul hadn't aimed as accurately as he had. He found a spot to set his glass down to occupy himself with action, however small; he was accustomed to hiding via movement.

But Paul persisted, committed to bringing Blaine down from this place where all he could do was compare Aaron to other parents, and then himself to other children.  
  
"I mean it, Blaine. You could've been an athlete, on the track team, you could've had a knack for science or loved numbers, or decided to be a novelist or a marine biologist or a _cashier_ \- it still wouldn't have mattered. You get it? It isn't _you_. When a man doesn't love his kid, the problem isn't with the kid – that’s not something that’s supposed to be vulnerable to circumstance. I never stopped loving Dave. It never even occurred to me that I could."  
  
"You don't think there's anything that could change your mind? If he got worse, if he never tried to fix things?"  
  
Paul shook his head. "Nothing. That's sort of the problem of raising a child, isn't it? No matter what they do, when you're a parent, you love them. I'd never be able to stop loving him. He's my boy. That's how it's supposed to work."  
  
Blaine looked a long time at Paul, trying to process but unable to produce results. He hadn’t learned the words he would need to make sense of himself in the wake of that awful answer. The way he was constructed made no sense.  
  
Paul, on the other, looked more elegant and composed than Blaine had ever seen him, standing stone-still in faded jeans and a shirt obviously bleached by accident. He was used to Paul in slacks and a tie. It wasn't until he saw him like this, sleeves rolled to his elbows and feet bare on the hardwood, that he realized how little Paul’s composure had to do with his clothing. It came from the way he leaned back into himself, the trim of his hair, how his lips were set in a constant line of disapproval that made his every compliment to Blaine mean so much.  
  
He was everything Blaine admired in a man. Everything he wanted. It was uncomfortable to realize; what was this? What was he doing here? What compelled him at every opportunity to do and say precisely the most problematic thing and then care so profoundly what Paul thought of it?  
  
Whatever it was, it was suddenly smothering. He heard himself say from faraway, "He doesn't deserve you."  
  
Paul's response was little more than a stammer tugged out by the impropriety.  
  
"I .. beg your pardon?"  
  
"He doesn't. He doesn't deserve you as a father. And you deserve better as a son." Blaine was tired and uncoordinated, smiling because Paul wasn't talking anymore, because he'd jarred him out of his fucking reverie. He was smiling, smiling and shameless, but he wouldn't hold onto that smile for long.  
  
He pitched forward clumsily, fell in all his hopelessness across Paul's chest and kissed him. He kissed him, fists balled against the worn-down fibers of Paul's old shirt, and for just a moment, one he'd replay in confusion for years, he felt the hesitant reciprocation of a man his father's age, teeth breaking open to impart a wet, curious tongue and a pant of satisfied breath into his mouth. He was kissing, he was _being_ kissed.  
  
It ended as soon as Blaine could be sure of it. Paul removed him roughly, peeled him off and pushed him away.  
  
"What are you doing?"  
  
Words caught in Blaine’s throat as he sank against the nearest wall, trying to make himself smaller, harder to spot. His hands found his face, flushed red with the strain of embarrassment and liquor drying in his veins. "I don't know,” he said, for the tenth time today, the hundredth, he didn’t know _anything, stupid, stupid, stupid boy. “_ I don't know, I'm sorry, I don't know!"  
  
Paul burned with discomfort, even with anger, but also with an ugly, twisted something _else,_ something permissive and hungry and full of destruction. Something that could still distinguish what of his mouth's wetness had come from Blaine, and craved a second taste.  
  
"You don't know how to behave," he told Blaine, voice hard.  
  
"I'm sorry," Blaine said again, then pushed off the wall to stand upright, and go.  
  
For the relief that washed through him when he thought of Blaine leaving, that ugly, twisted something else disagreed. Paul caught him with a hand at the crook of his elbow, pulled him back, held him still.  
  
"You don't know how to behave," he repeated, a lower, more sinister accusation. Directing Blaine's chin up with a firm knuckle, he demanded, "Look at me," and continued only when obeyed. "You need someone to teach you how to behave. Don't you?"  
  
Blaine, who'd been expressing his upset in miserable noises and air dragged cool across his teeth until then, fell utterly silent. He watched Paul's face, suspended between panic and arousal, hearing the invitation but unaware of what it wanted from him.  
  
He wasn't given a chance to interpret. Paul moved them both with quick, unyielding steps that pulled Blaine along to the dining table, spun him around to face it, and flattened him with a broad, heavy palm across its surface, belly-down, nose pressed against the polished wood and one of his wrists pinned by Paul against his spine. The hand he had left went helplessly to the nearest table leg and clutched at it, white-knuckled.  
  
He could've said anything. Responses churned in him, mad and uncoordinated as paper wasps, swarming; he could've asked him why, he could've demanded release, could have even answered with the awkward little _yes_ that seared the back of his tongue. Instead, sending out a gust of steam across the table’s shining surface, he came up with, "I can't do this," an ambiguous statement that Paul recognized as more plea than rejection. A plea for permission, specifically - permission to let someone else take over, permission to _want_ without guilt, permission not to have to pretend he didn't respond with sick, urgent compulsions when Paul laid him across the table.  
  
Paul obliged him. His free hand wandered down Blaine's underarm, side and hip, eating at the lines that shaped him with hungry fingers, rounding eventually to a faint stroke across the ass of his jeans.  
  
Blaine shuddered and sighed, stiffened and relaxed again.  
  
He spanked him once, lightly, an introductory sensation. Blaine's response was a charge released, he twitched, writhed, whined Paul's name.  
  
"I don't know this boy," Paul told him, and struck again, "I don't like him." Again. "He's impulsive and thoughtless."  
  
Blaine pressed his lips together to emit a series of _mm_ s, two low, one high, before agreeing in subdued misery, "I don't like him either." Resentment tried to build momentum somewhere internal, but he was simply too satisfied by the perverse attention. He felt like he could be fixed this way. He felt as if his ridiculous whims could just be smacked out of him.  
  
"You have to learn to control him."  
  
The tone of promise in his voice chilled Blaine, made him anxious and eager.  
  
"If I let your hand go, will you be good and keep still?" The pinned wrist was wrenched up just to the point of pain, a punctuation of what he'd asked. "Can I trust you?"  
  
Blaine rolled his forehead in slow arcs against the table, overwhelmed by the incomprehensible need driven into him by Paul's filthy breed of fathering.  
  
"Yes," he answered, an intimate sound more suited to lovemaking.  
  
Paul's fingers traveled to the loose curl of Blaine's hair and knotted there in brief, even disdain, yanked back his head to expose the long, stubbled neck in need of shaving. He brought Blaine to cognizance with a single syllable. "Yes?"  
  
Blaine gasped, responding positively to any form of touch that he couldn't ignore. He demonstrated his compliance in utter delight even at the pain.  
  
"Yes _sir_ , you can trust me," tight in his throat.  
  
"Good boy."  
  
Paul released the tension on Blaine's wrist and watched him move with the awareness of a performer, not wanting to disappoint, laying his hands in front of him and waiting, waiting, breath held.  
  
Paul spread his palms from the arch of Blaine's ass to the soft place where his belly made its vulnerable curve, unfastening and unzipping until he could slide Blaine's pants off, slow enough to be halted but certain it was not a test he'd have to take. His knuckles drifted back over bare skin, raising goosebumps, and needy sounds drifted to him from the head of the table. The _ease_ with which he could draw a reaction from this boy, this sorry boy so in need of guidance, only strengthened the questionable urge in Paul to be the one directing his progress.  
  
It didn't work like this with anyone else. Certainly not with his son - no matter how great his patience, David acted against him over and over, spit on his compassion, his understanding, his attempts to draw him into conversation. He couldn't break through the wall Dave put up, he couldn’t find out what was at root, he couldn’t help him fix it.  
  
Friends and lovers were no different. When Paul still allowed unbalanced people into his life, all the love and kindness he could hold in him were useless in the face of whatever demons decided their behavior. Either they tired of his attempts and disappeared, or he recovered his confidence and stood up for himself, and they disappeared faster.  
  
Blaine was unique. He was unfinished, gray and wet. It was tragic that no one had cared enough to sculpt him, but also fortuitous, because Paul's inefficiency at saving those he cared for had clearly begun to burn at his sanity like an acid. He could undo so many wrongs by committing this _one,_ he could give this boy structure and attention, he could give himself a chance at redemption as a caretaker, however filthy the platform. It was a twisted logic.  
  
Paul began to hit him again without warning, a series of sharp, consistent blows. Each one landed in audible, echoing smacks. A dusting of gasps and yelps fell from Blaine's mouth. His skin reddened and lifted, absorbed Paul's hand and traced back its imprint for him to see, became hot to the touch.  
  
It wasn't long before Blaine's shoulders began to tighten between strikes, braced for the impact, and Paul relented briefly to rub out the sting.  
  
"Was tonight the first time or the last time I'll get that kind of phone call from you?"  
  
Blaine's answer was immediate, and more sincere than anything he'd ever said.  
  
"The last, I promise."  
  
Paul's hand waved, stroked, dug its fingers in; he explored the resilience of Blaine's skin in consideration. "I don't appreciate that word - it doesn't make you more trustworthy. _Honesty_ should be enough. Don't make promises to me."  
  
"I won't do it again," Blaine corrected.  
  
Paul steadied himself against the table's edge and hit him once more, a hard, striking, punishing slap. "What?"  
  
"I won't do it again."  
  
Another slap, because Blaine tried to whisper as he adjusted to the ache. "Louder."  
  
The phrase found a home on Blaine's tongue through a sudden storm of brutality, one spank following another, Paul leveling fresh demands at him.  
  
"I'm not convinced," he said, then hit him harder. "Convince me."  
  
"Tell me slowly," he said, and followed his next strike through with a push that seemed to send pain from Blaine's skin straight into his bones.  
  
"Tell me what you won't do," he said. Another spank.

Blaine came apart at the seams bit by bit, red-faced with the effort of performing to Paul's satisfaction. Guilt and reason alike were driven out of him by the feeling, it was too hard, too intense, too much; there was room for nothing else inside him except that perfect, stinging hurt.  
  
As tight and overtired as his nerves were, as swollen and sore the red spread of skin, Blaine felt the deeper benefit of the blows. The loss of logic and restraint allowed him comfort in their stead. The relentlessness of Paul's attention was a tonic, queerly softening the dismissals and rejections that had lead him here in the first place.  
  
Right now, life was nothing but Paul, Paul showing him what he'd done wrong, Paul awake in the middle of the night to mentor him through the ruin and rebuilding, and Blaine trying harder than he'd ever tried for anything to make Paul understand that he respected him and didn't want to disappoint him, never.  
  
He didn't have to be prompted anymore. He'd given in completely to the fantasy.  
  
"I won't do it again, I _won't_ , Paul, never again. Please trust me. _Trust_ me, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."  
  
Paul did not relent, not yet. Not until Blaine worked his way from panting to moaning, moaning to open-mouthed shouting and, finally, from there into a wasted, weary whimper. He directed his hand to the sensitive hollow between ass and thigh without mercy until Blaine's body began to reject what his mind said he wanted, and he was clawing at the table, half in search of escape, half in sprawled, delirious struggle for more.  
  
He didn't stop all at once, either, but slowed the approach of his flat, wide palm, brought down the rhythm of Blaine's responses, and eventually let the touch fade to nothing.  
  
"Good boy," he promised, massaging the spread of punishment's blush, dark and throbbing, with his fingertips. "Good boy."  
  
Blaine was focused on his breathing, clinging tightly to the perverse, malformed unity he'd found in the experience and horrified at the thought of letting it go, when he heard his Paul’s approval falling over him and sagged with relief.  
  
"Thank you," he said, impassioned at first, desiring. The second time, it was a broken little noise that preceded a sob in his throat. " _Thank you_."  
  
"You're alright," Paul whispered, brushing at the thinly papered skin of Blaine’s ears, dragging his thumb back to the place where his hair started in a defiant curl, "You’ll be alright. It's not your job to raise you. Someone has to make you a man."  
  
He lifted Blaine off the table, keeping their bodies close together, and helped him back into his clothes. He was careful, now, careful not to rush, not to grow cold, not to appear as if he'd finished with him.  
  
Their arms were around each other when they were upright again, a combustion of closeness that neither could remember having started and neither was quick to break. Blaine's face was wet and warm on Paul's cheek, and his hands were a hard grab at the back of Paul's shirt; he could've written on him with his fingertips, _stay_.  
  
Movement started like a change in the weather. They swayed in place, a slow, unthinking dance, Paul stroking his head and Blaine relaxing into the touch. They were both denying the darker, disguised consequences, the rot of implication. Tomorrow wasn't here yet. Tomorrow would be everything wrong.  
  
Paul confessed sternly, as if to ward off the coming nightmare, "I've wanted to take care of you since the moment we met. Little lost thing."  
  
Blaine basked in the affection, wringing every drop of relief from it that he could. Paul wanted him, wanted to correct him, wanted to be there; it took him no effort to care. Blaine didn’t want to have to navigate away from this. He didn’t want to be put up in a room by Paul’s hospitality and lay down somewhere cold, isolated from him. This was too good, and his humiliation too raw.

He asked into Paul’s shoulder, "Can I sleep with you, tonight?"

Paul was beyond trusting his instincts. He didn’t even question the immediacy with which he said yes. He remembered vaguely agreeing to come into work on Saturday, he remembered promising datasheets delivered to the physical inboxes of colleagues, and it seemed impossible that he would wake up with Blaine in his bed in three hours and be able to leave it, but it mattered more that he say yes.  
  
He sent Blaine upstairs first, telling him which room to find. He hoped that being alone, even for a second, would allow him to collect himself and bring back the rigid reason with which he'd governed his life until now, prevent him from any more stupid, dangerous decisions.

  
But as soon as Blaine disappeared around the corner, gait stiff and slow, Paul's head rang loud with guilt, rang so loud he could barely see around the sound. It darkened the room, collected shadows at the corners of his eyes. Whatever compelled him earlier was suddenly a siren inside that he couldn't shut down.  
  
Whether he'd be healed by a night’s sleep or not, it was better to be with Blaine _now_.  
  
All those shadows scattered when he eventually climbed in bed beside him and felt the shift of Blaine's weight, rolling into him and locking both arms around his neck. They slept - neither had any trouble.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I pouted all the way through this chapter.

Waking hurt. Blaine's eyes blinked open, dry and sore, and pain rang through his head like a dull, determined song. Even in disorientation, bodily needs called out to him with precise immediacy: water, food, a good deal more sleep.  
  
The sun prying in from a cracked blind told him to search for his phone, instead, find the time. One hand groped forward into a tangle of fabric to pull it up under his nose. Reading 10:47am was only half as alarming as the three missed text message notifications, each one from Kurt.

_8:17: We finished early! Can my penance be a late dinner?_

_8:52: Come on, Anderson. The cold shoulder's out of season._

_9:27: Raincheck. Call me when you get a chance. I kinda like it._

  
An uneasiness simmered in Blaine, a dark, squirming something that he couldn't identify, and it started the minute he saw Kurt's name. It wasn't the raw scrape at the back of his throat from a night spent inhaling smoke, or the tin-tasting stain of alcohol on his tongue, in his stomach, wrapped like a vice grip around his forehead.  
  
It was something else.  
  
It was something wrong.  
  
He shifted in bed with the distinct impression of having embarrassed himself, but not, until his vision cleared enough that he could take in his surroundings, remembering how.  
  
Another blue room. No more blurry blackout forgiveness, just another blue room. Another blue room in Paul's house, in Paul's bed - and everything they did before climbing into it, _no._  
  
Nausea crept up Blaine's spine, swelled out into his blood and belly. He curled over his knees, whining with frenzied, sleepy dismay. Why, _why_ had he come here? This counted as being unfaithful, didn't it? He'd been unfaithful, he'd let another man put his hands on him. Not any man, not a stranger, not a friend, but Paul. An adult, a father.  
  
 _No_ , he decided, trying to manage the cresting discomfort and panic and guilt, _it wasn't my fault. He's older, I'd been drinking, that’s not my fault._ But he didn't believe himself, even though he knew he ought to. All he felt, where he wanted to feel anger, was shame.  
  
He had to get out of that house.  
  
Sparks of ache bolted through his head when he stood up, but that didn't impede the fast scramble he made for discarded clothing - jeans, shoes, a loose, red top.  
  
 _God, why would I get undressed, what is the matter with me, what is the_ matter _with me._  
  
The question tailed him out of the room, pants half-on and the rest of his clothes hugged tight to his chest, and down the staircase, but even with that overwhelming sense of alarm to propel him, he froze at the first landing, aware all at once of the noise he must've made by coming that far.  
  
Paul had to be down there, somewhere.  
  
What was he supposed to say to him? What if Paul had called his father? What if he wanted him to stay?  
  
Blaine sucked his lower lip between his teeth and fought back a sudden surge of tears. Of all the things he'd fucked up, of all the stupid decisions and questionable choices he'd made so far, nothing had ever felt so alienating and vile as this. _What do I do now, what?_  
  
"Blaine?"  
  
Paul's voice sounded from below, presumably in response to the brief onslaught of sound.  
  
It was enough to put him in motion again. Blaine jogged the last six steps and headed immediately for the door when he could see it, hoping beyond reason that Paul would be at least a room away, and he could make it by unseen.  
  
No such luck.  
  
Paul rose from the sofa in a single motion, letting a coffee cup thud haphazardly against the console table, to come after him.  
  
 _"Blaine_."  
  
"I have to go."  
  
He couldn't look at him. No nerve left for that ridiculous feat. There was nothing in him but urgency and embarrassment.  
  
"We need to talk about what happened," Paul demanded, equally as urgent, in almost as much of a panic. It fell better on him. Of course it did. His face was sullen and gray, as if the management of stress stayed solely in his skin, and when Blaine dared a glance over any part of him that was not his eyes, he noticed that he'd pulled himself back into neat dress and neutral colors.  
  
He looked like a sad, remote building, perfectly put together and offering only suggestions at the rot that might be going on underneath.  
  
"Nothing happened," Blaine argued, shuffling for the door and pulling his shirt on over his head. "I just have to go."  
  
Paul caught at him, just like he had last night, as he neared escape. There was entirely too much memory in the touch. Blaine dodged, curving away toward wall nearest the doorknob, shrinking, trying to minimize himself, minimize the space through which sensations from last night were invading. The things he'd said on that table, he was _sick_. They were both sick.  
  
" _Please_ ," Paul insisted, "Please, listen. I don't . . . I don't know what to do, I don’t know whether to beg your forgiveness or have myself committed, I don’t know how to apologize. All I know is that I need to make sure you're okay. Please. Talk to me."

"I'm not okay," he admitted, voice in shards, "I'm not okay, I want to go home. I don't want to talk about it, I want to go home. I won't say anything to anyone if we can just forget about it."  
  
"Don't say that, don't say it like that, I - just," Paul's hand fell from Blaine, repelled back by the shock of the phrase - as if he were some manipulative predator! In a wave of self-loathing (not his first of the morning), Paul realized that's exactly where he came out in this. That was his role. "It won't happen again. Ever, do you understand? I'm _sorry_ , Blaine. I can't even begin - If we could talk for just a _moment_ -"  
  
Blaine was weakened by the resistance Paul put up against him leaving, no matter how well-meaning, and he'd started from so low a point to begin with. He covered his face with a sleepy hand, hoping that his eyes would focus on a kinder reality when he dropped it, and said from beneath his fingers, "I'm going home Paul, okay? I'm going home."  
  
"At least let me drive you back to your car."  
  
"No. I have to go."  
  
It was the last thing said between them before Blaine slipped out, opening the door just enough to squeeze himself through the frame.  
  
He dialed Wes's number on his cell phone from a bookstore a mile up the road, and waited there to be picked up. It gave him just enough time to obsess over Kurt's face in his imagination, wounded and darkened by the news if he ever found out, happy in a way it would be agony to look at if he didn't find out, and Blaine standing next to him either way, now deceptive and untrustworthy, repulsive and crude.  
  
Wes didn't ask him what happened when he came. He didn't ask him on the slow, quiet journey back to Blaine's car. He didn't ask him when he dropped him at the entrance to Jonah Crane's driveway. Instead, he gave him a touch on the shoulder, almost too light to notice, and a smile.  
  
"Such a big-shot party animal, right? Call me when you're feeling better."  
  
"I will."  
  
In the safety of the driver's seat, stuck behind the wheel and peering out at the road that would take him home, Blaine let himself draw a full breath. Cool air crowded out the heat of holding in tears. He could make it through today, he could, even if it meant digging his way into tomorrow with bared teeth and bloody nails.  
  
He'd field his father's obligatory, insincere inquiries, rationalize lying to Kurt until it didn't hurt so much to do, and then sleep. It would be over by the time he woke up again, a bad memory, a distant, dark dream. What was this, in the end, but another layer in his costume? Nothing. Nothing but one more performance.  
  
Blaine Anderson was always game for one more performance.


	9. Chapter 9

Blaine’s exercise in pretending himself healthy began with great promise.  
  
He crafted lies to Kurt and his father in the gentlest of detail, saying that he'd gone to a house party and fallen asleep during one of many movies watched. If there were lingering questions about who he'd been with or where the party was, he intercepted their genesis with apologies and a reliably low-key insult of his own attention span.  
  
It was easier with Aaron. Aaron cared on a level of necessity. Being a good parent meant shaking his head and asking for sound assurance that it wouldn't happen again, at least not without a phone call.  
  
With Kurt, he was instantly nauseous again. He thought he saw Kurt’s hard, clear eyes darkening with a moment's suspicion while he talked. But the suspicion passed, eventually, if it had ever been there to begin with - after all, this was Blaine. Moral, upstanding, trustworthy Blaine.  
  
It didn't come up again. Blaine didn't let it.  
  
Conversations with Kurt were things he orchestrated for a long while after, preparing himself with fallback topics in case of lulls. Lulls were to be avoided. Lulls gave room for curiosity to resurface about the party. Lulls meant Kurt remembering something about his fundraiser - the fundraiser meant David, David meant Paul. A disastrous train of thought he refused to let carry him. Now that guilt was such a defining aspect of life, Blaine couldn’t risk looking jealous. either. It might invite examination of his feelings.  
  
He simply couldn’t afford a lull.  
  
The daily effort of performance siphoned out his energy. For nearly a month he was simply too tired at the end of a day to think about what he'd done, what Paul had done to him, what it meant for the both of them. He could take in a breath and sleep, and if the dreams he had were troubling, their effect was lost in the next day’s shuffle of exhaustion and strain.  
  
Then, all at once and very unexpectedly, there was a settling.  
  
Summer left its stains on their shoulders (Blaine’s often exposed in ribbed tanks and swimwear, Kurt’s almost always concealed by something sheer and gauzy), and with the exception of the PFLAG fundraiser looming ahead, a distinctly seasonal lack of urgency came to Lima.  
  
There were quiet moments. Parked out on the hill, grass prickling their backs through cotton, lying half-bare by the community pool, limb-locked together on Burt’s recliner reading periodicals - where could he have fit words in? Words made no sense when they did these things. Blaine had to learn to accept silence again. Ignoring Paul's name in his memory became a daily chore, rather than a natural side-effect to being pre-occupied by chatter.  
  
With nothing to inhibit it, Blaine noticed Paul seeping through the cracks of the wall he’d built against him. He was startled again and again by frequent, ruinous thoughts of an visiting his office, of the exposure he allowed in their emails, of the inappropriate hours they’d spent on the phone together.  
  
Their first call, in particular, knocked about his head until it seemed he’d have to surgically extract it.  
  
It happened just after that first Sunday stolen by PFLAG - the one that introduced him to Paul. Kurt had referred to his dinner with Dave (to discuss promotional flyers) as a “work date,” and later that night, Blaine’s father requested he stay upstairs during a cocktail party for colleagues.  
  
Both were insulting, but neither his father nor Kurt recognized the harm in what they’d done, and Blaine couldn’t bring himself to admit how offended he was. It would have meant looking as petty and insecure as he actually felt, which was unthinkable.  
  
Still, it left him isolated in his bedroom for the rest of the night with a pain he couldn’t dispel and no one he trusted enough to discuss it with.  
  
How he motivated himself to leave the bed and dig into his jacket pocket, where Paul’s number had been since the day they met, was of no interest to his mind’s eye, now. It only recalled his fidgeting fingers over the keypad, Paul’s voice on the other end after three rings, and Blaine nearly losing his nerve and ending the call the moment he heard it.  
  
“Who is this?,” Paul asked the silence.  
  
“Blaine,” he’d answered, stiff and sad.  
  
He remembered so clearly what it felt like to hear Paul ask him, immediately, “What’s the matter?," and the concern in Paul’s voice, the unhesitating invitation to be listened to.  
  
It caused Blaine to withdraw from the welcome, self-conscious and suddenly aware that his problem might be too silly to have troubled a relative stranger with. He wasn’t sure he deserved that sort of unbiased, fretful attention.  
  
“I don’t even – I don’t know why I called.” In many ways, it was a premonition of what would happen in Paul’s office weeks later.  
  
“I’m sure you had a good reason.” In many ways, it was exactly the exact opposite of that awful encounter.  
  
“It seems kind of stupid, now.”  
  
Paul took a breath. Blaine could hear him pulling air into himself over the phone. It wasn’t a sigh, it wasn’t a laugh. He was settling.  
  
“If it was important enough for you to call me, it’s important enough for me to listen to.”  
  
Blaine hadn’t built any defenses against that kind of encouragement, not yet. He couldn’t dance around it, he couldn’t make a joke to play it down. All he could do was surrender to a burning at the back of his throat that precluded recitations of what the day had done to him – of his father and his father’s friends downstairs, their laughter traveling all the way up to the bedroom door, of his boyfriend at dinner with someone else, someone he couldn’t stand, someone he was too often passed over for, lately.  
  
Blaine was indelicate, confused and full of sentences that ran together, rivulets of dirt in the rain, but Paul never stopped him.  
  
More importantly, Paul _responded._ He asked questions, he gave suggestions, he validated Blaine’s upset and told him that obliviousness to being hurtful wasn’t a license to cause hurt. He encouraged Blaine to talk to Kurt, to talk to Aaron, but promised that he’d be there to listen again, in the future, if Blaine couldn’t do either one.  
  
It was Paul’s talent with reciprocal conversation that caused their calls to run so long. He didn’t want Blaine to hang up until he wasn’t upset anymore, so he’d try to make him laugh before they said goodbye. Paul would liken something Blaine said to a story from his childhood, and if Blaine asked for more detail, he’d make his answer a little playful. It was easy for a discussion of unhappiness to become a game of trading stories instead.  
  
And there _was_ laughter, and it _was_ Blaine’s, but it was Paul’s, too, so that a series of interactions which started out so simply became utterly enjoyable, no matter what inspired them.  
  
Paul would chuckle at the end of each call and announce how long they’d been talking, then say, “I feel like a teenager again.”  
  
These were things Blaine didn’t _want_ to remember. He didn’t want to remember hanging up that first time, feeling loose and unburdened, or hanging up the second time with a smile stuck on his face, or the third time, the disastrous third time, when he’d said something unintentionally flirtatious at the end.  
  
He didn’t want to wonder if that’s where it began, whatever this was, whatever was happening to him.  
  
He didn’t want to see the silhouette of Paul in a stranger while he was shopping and feel his stomach tighten, he didn’t want to look at a father and son across the room when he was out to dinner with Kurt and lose his appetite.  
  
It used to be Aaron who haunted him this way.  
  
"You okay?" Kurt's eyes shone at him in curious appraisal, and Blaine realized he'd been staring out the window of the bookstore’s coffee shop, working too hard at not thinking.  
  
"Yeah," he said, smiling, shaking his head in that oblivious way of his. "Yeah, I'm great. Just relaxed."  
  
Kurt didn't challenge the excuse. He’d been caught up in his own animated recitations for half an hour, filling Blaine in on anything and everything to happen since their last conversation, which was a hard train to stop.  
  
Thoughts and images from the distilled periphery of his imagination nagged at him while Kurt was talking, trying to beckon him back, back and away. He needed something to grab onto in Kurt’s story, something that would hook into his thoughts and reel him fish-like back to shore.  
  
"Did I tell you I caught Finn and Rachel, mid-attempted-hookup this weekend?"  
  
That was an effective distraction.  
  
Blaine slammed his open palm against the table in amused and only half-pretended shock, demanding details.  
  
" _No._ Tell me everything, except what it looked like. Unburden yourself."  
  
"It was borderline traumatic," Kurt insisted. "Finn tried to excuse it by acting as if she'd _just_ come over, and hadn’t seen the house before. 'Over here's my, uh, you know, my CDs and stuff, and uh.'  So much second-hand embarrassment."  
  
“Wasn’t she over for dinner less than a week ago?”  
  
Kurt screwed his expression into a sneer of contempt for the memory. “She was also topless when I found them.”  
  
“Oh my god.”  
  
“ _He_ was also topless when I found them.”  
  
Blaine closed his eyes to flush away the image and begged with light-hearted mirth, “Oh, you actually have to stop now.”  
  
“He had a back zit.”  
  
Kurt laughed with his mouth open, showing each and every tiny pebble tooth he had, the way Blaine liked best. Blaine answered the sound, and his painted-on smile became quickly sincere, easy and bright.  
  
Gazing weakly off into space like he had was an accident, and accidents were to be expected. They didn’t mean anything, though. They didn’t mean _anything_. As far as Blaine was concerned, he’d gone to a party a month ago and fallen asleep on Jonah’s sofa. End of discussion.  
  
“I should be kinder,” Kurt pointed out, clearly in jest. “He might catch us one of these days, and god knows his brain-to-mouth filter’s about as hardy as chiffon on prom night.”  
  
“Afraid he’ll blab about your unflattering body parts?”  
  
Kurt’s defense was swift, accompanied by a familiar gesture of needless hair tucking.  
  
“I _have_ no unflattering body parts.”  
  
“No? Nothing? Not a single stray hair or unsightly paunch? Patch of _backne_? “  
  
Teasing was an aspect of their relationship that had gone missing in the fallout of PFLAG’s assembly. Somewhere in the shuffle of Kurt’s pull toward the project and Blaine’s clumsy experimenting in Jonah Crane’s basement, they turned awkward and gentle around each other. Play was a part of their foundation. Without it, it seemed too easy to be bruised. Feeling it come back to them was a comfort to Blaine, and snipe after snipe, he felt himself drifting from the quagmire.  
  
“Just what are you insinuating?”  
  
Blaine raised his coffee cup, one brow cocked to the question’s challenge.  
  
“ _Rochefoucauld_ \- ‘If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.’”  
  
“You namedropping 16th century authors absolutely does not impress me. I think somebody’s trying to solicit a physical inspection.”  
  
Flirtation. Banter. This was better. This, he could handle. If they were fine, he was fine - everything was going to be _just fine._  
  
“Guilty,” Blaine said, and for a moment, it wasn’t a spoiled word.  
  
Kurt’s expression turned mischievous and confident, voice lowering to a rumble of invitation.  
  
“Honestly, there are easier, less insulting ways to see me take my top off. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed in you, Anderson.”  
  
Blaine froze, dropped like a cracked ship through one relentless wave after another until he touched the sandy earth below.  
  
It was impossible not to remember how the same words had hit in the witness stand of Paul’s SUV, how he'd shaken under the scrutiny and wanted to reach out with both hands to force Paul’s positive opinions of him back into his mouth. At the time, he could think of no feeling more ugly than Paul’s disappointment.  
  
Kurt reciting it as if by script proved him wrong, and the resulting uneasiness was too sudden to hide.  
  
“Blaine, I was joking,” Kurt amended, presumably at the sight of his face, now overcast and tight.  
  
“No,” Blaine dismissed, reaching for his disguises but unable to lay a firm hold on any of them, “No, I know, I just. You know what? I just remembered I’m supposed to be heading home already, that’s all. Dad arranged a phone interview with an alumnus of Dartmouth, I’ve got to act fascinated and oblivious for a half hour or so.”  
  
He laughed into his own joke, but secretly balked at how naturally the lie came together. Was this going to be something he simply did, now? Something he had to do forever?  
  
Kurt offered him an expression of sympathy.  
  
“Poor thing. It’s alright, I should get going anyway. Dave’s truck is in the shop and I told him I’d help move things from his dad’s house to his mom’s for the week.”  
  
Blaine’s hand jerked on its journey toward his coffee cup when Paul entered the conversation, entered it as Dave’s _dad_. His fingers missed their mark and toppled the drink over. Liquid splashed and spread, Kurt leapt backward from his seat at the table, and Blaine could do little more for a full four seconds than declare, “ _Shit!”_  
  
An employee hurried over with a bundle of paper towels, neither surprised nor particularly amused by what was, for him, a daily occurrence, but Blaine plucked half of the towels from his hands without asking, determined that the scene be diffused as quickly as possible. He couldn’t leave someone else to clean his mess.  
  
“I’m so sorry,” he said, first to the employee, then to Kurt, “I’m so sorry.”  
  
“I’ll get it, I got it. I _got_ it,” the employee told him, and told him again until he stopped the awkward stab of his fingers bunched with napkins into the spill.  
  
“You’re a mess,” Kurt said, coming around the table. “Maybe we’ll switch you to decaf.”  
  
“I’m fine, just. I feel bad. I don’t know what happened, there. I didn’t get any on you, did I?”  
  
“I didn’t drop you with a deer rifle, did I?” Kurt smiled brightly behind his threat.  
  
“I’ll call you later,” Blaine concluded.  
  
A kiss goodbye was spent between them before he climbed into his car, thankful for Kurt’s assumption of clumsiness. He didn’t see, lingering behind him as he pulled free of the parking lot and aimed for home, Kurt standing just outside the café door, brow creased, lips tight.


	10. Chapter 10

Aaron wasn’t supposed to be home yet.  Summer evenings meant longer office hours (to compensate for other men’s vacations) and a hefty increase in event invitations. This was a routine long since established. Blaine counted on it in the management of their awkward family dynamic.  
  
But low music greeted him when he walked in the door, still flushed and unstable after leaving Kurt at the bookstore, and in crossing the foyer to get upstairs, the apparition he wanted his father to be said to him from the den, “Welcome home,” relaxed and soft over the brim of a book.  
  
Blaine hesitated, awkward, exposed, unsure what to do with his hands. He wanted neither to commit to where he was nor to leave - he didn't want to be alone. He didn't want to be alone, and he didn't want to be with anybody who would unintentionally hurt him. Hinging the outcome on his father was a dangerous game. On any other day, he wouldn’t have invited the risk.  
  
Even before Blaine made a decision, Aaron detected the heavy, irregular breathing he’d brought inside with him and looked up, assessing the scene.  
  
"Is something the matter?"  
  
Blaine pretended that he heard no impatience in the inquiry. Or maybe there really wasn't any, this time.  
  
He coughed out his response with a blend of gratitude and caution, "Yes."  
  
Aaron did not ask him to elaborate, but neither did he look away. He was waiting for an explanation. He _wanted_ an explanation.   
  
Blaine covered his vulnerability with a smile that looked obscene with the rest of his face so upset, and said, “I just don’t feel well. It’s been kind of a bad day - a bad couple of days.”  
  
“Well,” Aaron began, vaguely confounded by the simplicity of the problem, “We all go through phases like that, I suppose. You ought to take something and go to bed early. I’m sure you’ll feel better in the morning.”  
  
Hope lit up and sizzled and faded in Blaine. That was all he had to offer? A shot of Nyquil and another night by himself, two stories up, still unsorted but sedate?

Why couldn’t he just ask him a question? _Why?_  
  
On any other day, Blaine would’ve expected the mannered disinterest Aaron dealt in and shuffled to his room, barely bothered and already thinking of something else. In fact, he wouldn’t have tried talking to Aaron at all, not on _any other day._  
  
Today, though, he'd come into it weak from the start. All the things he was made of were terrified and trembling, each of them _wanted_. Each of them wanted so much. They wanted comfort, and to be gently complimented on their usefulness, and to have their aches shushed down with warm whispers until they stopped aching. He couldn’t convince himself not to rush head-first into disaster. Aaron was the only one around and Blaine was in need.  
  
“Is that . . . all you’re going to say?”  
  
By the time he’d worked up the nerve to ask, Aaron was already distracted by the book on his lap. He looked up again as if surprised by Blaine being there.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
Blaine knew this wasn’t the sort of thing you admitted out loud. When someone refused to give you the attention that you wanted, you weren’t supposed to say so. It gave too much away. It spotlighted shameful, human things designed for being concealed. He knew that.  
  
The insight didn’t make him any more capable of biting his tongue.  
  
“Dad – look at me, I just . . .how can that be all you have to say? You aren’t going to ask, you don’t even want to know why I’m upset?”'  
  
Cruelty wasn’t at the heart of Aaron’s shortcomings. He knew as well as Blaine did that there was something off about his parenting, some vital component missing in his approach to raising a son. And he knew when it hurt Blaine, and he knew that it was wrong. What he didn’t know was how to fix it. Leading parallel lives and letting the subject rest had worked well for them so far.  
  
That Blaine was suddenly so willing to risk their fragile balance awoke the rotted old urge in Aaron to act as though he knew how to father, to pretend that he could _understand_ his son, at least until he felt better.  If it was severe enough for Blaine to allow this level of discomfort between them, he had to take it seriously.  
  
He closed his book, set it neatly on the table beside him, and straightened up under the effort.  
  
“If you want to tell me, you can tell me.”  
  
Rather than the satisfaction Aaron expected, Blaine made a noise of disgust in his throat, head angled harshly to the side as if trying to throw something off of himself.  
  
“I don’t. I don’t want to tell you.”  
  
“Alright—“  
  
“What I want is for you to _want_ me to tell you.”  
  
Aaron's forehead wrinkled, expression moving from a lack of comprehension to annoyance.  
  
“I won’t have games played with me, Blaine.”  
  
“I'm not playing games with you," Blaine offered plaintively. He wanted to mirror the strength in his father's voice, but it cracked from him; he sounded just as hurt and structurally faulty as he felt. "You’re _supposed_ to want me to tell you why I’m upset, I’m not supposed to have to – you shouldn’t say I can talk to you like you’re giving me _permission.”_  
  
Aaron was lost, aimlessly trying to navigate through the fallout of what he’d thought was the right thing to say. He didn’t understand why offering Blaine the opportunity to speak with him was cause for such offense, and he couldn’t get comfortable in the struggle for comprehension. This was _not_ comfortable.  
  
Simply, even helpfully, he answered, “I thought that’s what you wanted," because if it wasn't, Blaine needed to recognize that he'd have to say so.  
  
“You are _clueless_.”  
  
“Blaine.” Just like that, a foul called by the hard stamp of his voice, Aaron decided it was too much for him to manage. He couldn’t will the knowledge of Blaine’s anger to come alive inside him, and Blaine could clearly not be relied on to help bridge the gap. Moreover, his pride was too great to let him sit still under a 17-year-old’s criticism until the tantrum passed. He needed either to stop talking, or leave.  
  
Blaine refused to heed the warning in Aaron’s tone.  
  
“You are! All day long I’ve been – I thought there was something wrong with me, I’ve been walking around like I have a problem, but _you’re_ the one with the problem, do you know that? There's something wrong with _you_."  
  
Aaron’s instinct, at that, was to prevent further injury to either of them.  
  
“Go upstairs, Blaine.”  
  
“I don’t understand why you can’t just talk to me!”  

 _Paul can talk to me_ , he thought, and right away anxiety sang between his ribs, because he shouldn’t think about Paul _again_ , because he’d almost said it out loud, because Paul was absolutely everywhere he looked these days and he couldn’t breathe like this. He couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t working, pretending wasn’t working.  
  
“Until you calm down, upstairs. Please.”  
  
The very idea made him go rigid with fear. He couldn’t go upstairs, not now. It was worse than when he’d first come home. It wasn’t just a memory humming along the horizon, but an obsession, an assault on his senses. He wouldn’t be able to stop thinking if he had to be alone.

He had to try again, just once more, and be direct about it. Aaron appreciated directness, didn’t he? _He won’t have games played with him, Blaine. Tell him what you want._  
  
Blaine pressed his hands to his face, a steadying gesture that wiped away the accusations and anger when they dragged back down, catching negativity and hysteria like insects between each finger and flinging them off. He reigned in his voice, filling its gaps with the earnestness that often served him well, and looked Aaron in the eye.  
  
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Can we just - I need you, okay? I need you to care, and that’s it. I need my dad. That’s _it._ Can you just – can you be that, just for a minute?”  
  
Aaron touched his mouth with two fingers. He touched his mouth because he wanted too much to answer with a fast, restorative, “Yes.” He wanted to say it, he honestly, genuinely did. It would be an instant balm to the damage he’d done, and it was how _normal men_ reacted to that kind of a plea. Blaine was counting on his rationale, if nothing else, and at any cost, Aaron wanted to live up to this last, defenseless expectation.  
  
Instead, he touched his mouth, and nothing more. Fear silenced the spark of his bravery. It spun a convincing rebuttal: even if he told Blaine what he wanted to hear, he’d have to talk _again_ when Blaine was finished explaining whatever it was that had him so distraught. He’d do just as he did a moment ago, and say precisely the wrong thing. He would hurt him, he would hurt him a second, a third, a fourth time, a time without a number, he’d only make it worse. It didn’t matter what tactics he employed or what intentions motivated him.   
  
The helplessness he reacted with, silent but powerful, settled between them, staking its icy claim.  
  
Blaine left, waiting only as long as it took to will the strength back into his legs, and Aaron, with a swallow, turned back to his book.


	11. Chapter 11

In the privacy of his bedroom where quick, furious tears were swiped and swatted as they formed, Blaine tried to reason with himself that the day’s destruction was impermanent, a minor hiccup. He only needed to breathe, stop crying and have a good night’s sleep. It was one battle lost in the face of a greater war - he just needed to stop, just stop for a minute, just _relax_.  
  
The strength of his unhappiness was at once a source of intrigue and a reason for worry – none of his talents for self-soothing were effective. Nothing coated the ache, nothing dulled that throbbing deep in him that announced his distress in alarms and pushed it higher and higher up his throat.    
  
Nothing, and nothing still, and then nothing again, until _Paul._ The same stained name that had been jeering at him from the sidelines for hours, the impetus to the disaster this day had become, the parasite claiming little pieces of his insides no matter how many wasted urges he swallowed, trying to drown it, was the first thing to let him take a sharp inhale that didn't burn.  
  
Blaine tested the cool shock of that impact, whining into his palms, “ _Paul,”_ the way children call quietly for parents they know are nowhere near them. His name was so easy to _say_. He'd been certain for days that it would choke him if he ever tasted it again, but it flushed him clean instead, allowed breath after stabilizing breath. It possessed power, too, evoking his scent and his suits and the salt  & pepper neatness of a beard Blaine remembered feeling when they kissed.  
  
Flimsy as its construction had been, Blaine was still amazed to feel the armor he’d built against these perversions fall so neatly down. Panic left him, unhurried but in motion, and had its post assumed by the sad clarity of realized need.  
  
It couldn’t be like this. He couldn’t live. It would be today _every_ day, feeling sneaky and full of guilt, like he was holding something awful in his mouth and if he spoke more than a word or two it would come toppling out in front of everybody. He’d be isolated even with people who loved him and he’d reach to all the wrong places for comfort.  
  
He couldn’t. He needed Paul. Whether for right now or forever, he needed Paul, and nothing was going to feel right in him, it was all going to squirm and spill and ruin until he had that again, until he had what he needed.  
  
Aaron wouldn’t hear him when he left his room, or when he laid quiet footsteps on the carpeted stairs that carried him down to the first floor landing. He _would_ hear the creaking open of a thick, tired back door, and, eventually, Blaine’s car pulling out of the driveway. He would hear that.  
  
He just wouldn’t stop him.


	12. Chapter 12

He was already knocking on Paul’s door when the potential for disaster dawned on him. Someone else might be visiting, he might not be home, he might not even wantto _see_ him after he’d spent so long freezing him out - there were a dozen opportunities for discomfort and no reason at all not to have called first, not to be even _marginally_ clever about what he was doing.  
  
But Paul answered quickly, and answered alone.

 

Seeing him again was nothing like Blaine expected it would be. He expected to feel himself smiling too hard, or maybe for Paul to be angry. He expected that they would burst into conversation and catharsis, at the end of which everything would slide into place; simple, manageable, organized.  He expected to be calmed by the sight of Paul like he’d been calmed by the thought of his name. If he were calm, he’d behave like an adult, hear whatever wisdom Paul must have determined about what they’d done together and absorb it as his own.  
  
Instead, Paul was impassive and quiet. If he sent Blaine away, if he didn’t _want_ him, after all this awful silence - then what?  
  
“What are you doing here?”  
  
There was nothing malicious in the question, but nothing warm, either. It coughed up out of Paul, as if he’d swallowed it a month ago and had been waiting to let it out since then. Blaine didn’t trust his instincts enough to analyze the tone of voice Paul was using, so he couldn’t answer, not yet. Not until he was sure Paul wouldn’t reject him. He watched for any betrayal of feeling.  
  
Paul nudged at the lack of reply. “I didn’t think – Blaine, I’ve been worried. Are you alright?”  
  
It was a stupid thing to ask. Blaine’s face was red, his eyes swollen and dim, his mouth a dark line. He hadn’t been alright in days. But ‘worry’ was good enough. Worry wasn’t a reprimand, and it wasn’t a rejection. Worry was _something._  
  
“Paul.” It was a sad word when he said it, reaching for a safe place to hide. He collided with him, forcing his way into Paul’s affection. His hands gripped where they landed, open-fingered palms pressing hard into the back of Paul’s thin gray shirt.  
  
Paul was instantly responsive. He gave a hard grunt of relief and held Blaine tight, then tighter, expelling with every breath the last four weeks of missing and misery and confusion and fear. They didn’t matter. Blaine crowded out the concern and left only enough room to sag into the embrace and hang there with him, fingers in his hair, murmuring noises of comfort.  
  
“Hey, hey. What’s the matter? Tell me what’s wrong.”  
  
Blaine tucked his face into the hollow of Paul’s neck, breathing uneven and labored, but right now – how could he explain it? – right now, nothing was wrong. Right now, it just felt too good to be with him for Blaine to handle any other way than by being emotional.  
  
He didn’t ask again. Blaine would talk when he needed to talk, and Paul wouldn’t deny him the closeness he was so clearly, so shamelessly dependent on until he did.  
  
What a vital component to fatherhood, _needing._ Paul hadn’t thought himself the type, when he was younger - the type to foster an addiction to being depended on. He did not need people to need him back then. He married and loved an independent woman, entertained the company of stoic, stable friends. Even Dave’s youthful reliance on him was something to tolerate rather than encourage. It was expected, it was necessary, but it was not necessary to _him._  
  
When Dave distanced himself from the family after years in that pattern, creeping back one foot at a time from their open arms into his secretive struggles, Paul had no idea what the loss would do to his self-worth. It was infuriating but unmistakable – that patch of burnt, hardened feeling left behind, that space where someone wanting his guidance should have been. Somewhere along the way, he’d come to count on Dave looking up to him. He had trusted his ability to be a parent obliviously, only to find that he was no longer Hero to his little boy, no longer _Pops_. He was nothing but another face for Dave to glance at before grunting that he didn’t feel like coming to dinner.  
  
Later, when Dave turned from solitude to outright defiance and an uneven, unpredictable temper, Paul exhausted himself trying to be the force behind his son’s rehabilitation. It never worked. It was one failure after another, and each one left this uncomfortable new truth about him more exposed than the last – he didn’t know how not to be needed, anymore.  
  
What an inconvenient time for him to have met Blaine. With just a few more months of adjustment, this might never have happened.  
  
Paul kept on soothing with sounds just the same, leaving messages of comfort and encouragement in Blaine’s ear. When he stopped, he pressed a kiss, small and closed-lipped, against Blaine’s temple. Seconds later, another.  
  
The third landed an inch or two below the ear he’d been whispering in. The fourth left his cheek with a faint suction. Each one gave Paul something different to feel and consider. Each one played a role in enticing his recklessness, in leading him lower.  
  
He pulled Blaine’s face from his shoulder with both hands to read its expression, watched it leave behind the hurt of the day and transition into something else. It was curious, wondering, then certain and hungry. Paul took barely a second to analyze the shift before dropping a fifth kiss onto his lips, prying at them, urging them open, breaking through and tasting, _tasting,_ licking into the affection he’d rejected a month ago.  
  
There were things to be learned about Paul in the way that he kissed. He liked to lead – his tongue slid forward first and wrestled the other into helpless, slack-jawed submission. He liked a mannered kind of teasing, pulling a plump bit of Blaine’s lip between his teeth to tug. He liked, better than anything, to swallow up sounds from his partner. Whenever Blaine offered up a whine of satisfaction, flush against Paul’s mouth, Paul would smile, baring his teeth before plunging in again to dig up another.  
  
Blaine bit back frantically at the combustive attention Paul gave. He’d wanted this a month ago, he’d wanted it in denial ever since, and to finally _have_ it left him useless to any function that was not kissing Paul.  
  
“Here,” Paul demanded when he broke them apart, “Come here.” He clutched and pulled and guided, removing Blaine from the porch and shutting them in together.  
  
Privacy spurred an assault of motion between them. Hurried jerks crashed Blaine against the door when it closed. Their hands pawed desperately at any accessible part of each other - the curve of Blaine’s arms, the front of Paul’s sweater, fistfuls of soft, silver hair.  
  
They were partners in contrast, each representing what the other was not. Blaine lifted a lean leg to hook around Paul, limbs spry and agile, his grasshopper body always humming with action, with quick, nervous gestures and a face that shifted like sand. Paul, against him, weighting him, was barrel-solid, sound as stone. He was thickness and substance, width and wisdom.  
  
When their mouths tore free for air, Blaine caught sight of a faintly wrinkled hand in motion, slipping under his shirt. Paul exposed a patch of youthful, resilient skin where the touch crept higher, and Blaine’s eye could identify the way their complexions varied, how _different_ Paul was, how much older, more sturdy, more worn.  
  
He choked on a sound of pitiful arousal, arching forward to meet Paul’s curious fingers. Paul read the invitation as if it were spoken. His decades of experience with sex collided with Blaine’s comparative lack, and instinct drove him in to suck a fresh kiss from the hollow of Blaine’s neck while exploring the skin beneath his shirt.  
  
Kurt hadn’t learned to answer his gestures that way, not yet. That arch was all it took for Paul to press his fingertips in and force them in four firm lines up Blaine’s ribcage. He read the response to that, as well, when Blaine bit his bottom lip and churned out an animal sound; he liked, he wanted, Paul gave. His fingers collapsed to pull a drag of knuckles over Blaine’s breast, catching at a single nipple before dropping down to the vulnerable softness of belly.  
  
“More,” Blaine ordered.  
  
“Where,” Paul murmured, just below his ear. “Show me where.” He offered up his hand for direction, voice reverently low, and Blaine circled his wrist to pull it back to his body.  
  
He nudged open his shirt a second time, guiding Paul’s touch, palm flat, underneath it.  
  
Paul wanted, somewhere, to deny himself access, to deny Blaine’s misguided requests for affection. He’d been proud before Blaine, stiff and stoic, impenetrable and reliant on morality. This was not moral. He was aware of the empty space where guilt should’ve been, the place guilt _had_ been for the past thirty days, but no matter how hard he willed it back to him now, it resisted.  
  
He let Blaine lead him.  
  
First, he lead up – up, up and up, helping Paul peel the shirt’s fabric over his shoulders and past his head until it could be discarded, leaving only a naked chest behind – then, he lead out.  
  
Out, to the swell of a ribcage accommodating gasps of pleasure. Out, toward the place where Blaine’s natural nudity smudged into a faint, golden tan. Following Blaine’s suggestions, Paul made journeymen of his fingertips, drawing lines with them from one end of a proud little collarbone to the other, groping over rounded shoulders, circling a young, tight throat as it swallowed.  
  
Blaine took him to all of these places, responding in groans and writhing against the door, gluttonous in his satisfaction. But he was still hungry; no touch was enough. This was an antidote, the first cold spread of cream over a burn – his whole body had been waterlogged with unhappiness for so long, and finally, _finally,_ one certain stroke at a time, all of the ache was being extracted.  
  
He said again, “More _, more_ ,” and pulled Paul’s wrist down across his lap, forming his palm over the shape of his crotch through denim.  
  
It was intimate enough and so unexpected that Paul could jerk free of the accommodating denial Blaine often thrust him into.  
  
“Stop,” Paul said, a wire word that prodded into Blaine and made him freeze. It rarely occurred to him that Paul was someone he could disobey.    
  
Still, his fingers twitched where they rested in Paul’s hair, and his eyes were shut to enjoy the scenery he fantasized until he could be _touched_ again.  
  
“We’ve been where we are,” Paul explained. “You ran out of here.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Blaine batted back immediately, mistaking the reminder for admonishment.  
  
Paul worked just as quickly to assure him otherwise, but managed, at first, only a stiff and certain, “No, no.” He wanted to amend the misconception by maintaining that most, if not all, of the fault rested with him, but without having talked it over, without knowing how Blaine felt or what he’d been thinking all this time, it was a rough road to navigate. How could he correct what he hadn’t even heard?  
  
“Has anything changed?” he chose at last, pressing a thumb into the peach skin dampness of Blaine’s cheek. “I won’t watch you leave that way a second time. Before we go any further, you have to tell me what changed.”  
  
“Tomorrow,” Blaine promised, nipping forward to catch another kiss.  
  
Paul maneuvered away, heard Blaine whine his displeasure, but steadied him with hands gripped tight around his shoulders. “Talk to me.”  
  
It was all he could do to look Paul in the face when he explained himself. Every part of him staggered and swayed in the dumb, drunk pitch of his arousal. He tried to pretend maturity, but his voice was little more than a pleading mewl. He was not prepared for conversation.  
  
“I don’t want to talk tonight, Paul, I can’t _talk a_ nymore. I’m so sick of hearing myself. You have no idea. I just want _this,_ just for now. And we can talk tomorrow. I won’t leave. I promise I won’t leave.”  
  
As he spoke, his fingers crept across Paul’s chest, gathering knots of fabric and squeezing comfort out of them. He could feel the way Paul sagged under the effort of trying to deny him.  
  
Paul’s demand was weary, coming to Blaine’s ear as a gruff pant of air, the result of admitting defeat; “Don’t make promises to me, Blaine.”  
  
That was all the concession Blaine needed, and all the argument Paul could put up.  
  
“Take me upstairs?”  
  
“I will,” Paul said, then looked, in seconds, at war with himself, scaling Blaine’s arms and face with the tips of his fingers while simultaneously trying to resist. “But,” he dictated, steadying the touch at the back of Blaine’s head and holding his attention where he wanted it; forward, “don’t, don’t do that to me again. Okay, Blaine? Ever.”  
  
Blaine answered with the rapid-fire eagerness of being given a second chance, “ _Never,”_ and bit his tongue when he felt the urge to swear. “Never again, take me upstairs.”  
  
This time, he didn’t make Blaine go alone. This time, relying on the sturdiness of the door to lift him off his feet, he slung Blaine’s legs around himself and carried him, tucked tight and breathing deeply, to his room.


	13. Chapter 13

Paul woke before Blaine, again. Last time he’d rolled carefully out of bed, crept downstairs, made a pot of coffee and stared at the wall, sick with self-loathing and trying to make as much sense as he could of his actions without having to look too closely at them. This time, he stayed where he was. He wanted to see Blaine when his eyes first opened, wanted to read whatever would be there before the day could disguise it - regret or comfort? Confusion or satisfaction?   
  
That meant watching him in stillness a long while, long enough to experience a dizzying endearment at the sight of his vulnerability, and long enough even to eventually grow bored of the task.   
  
He plucked up a book from his bedside table and shifted his focus there, with Blaine breathing beside him, warm and alive, impossible to ignore. He had to be part of the moment, instead - Paul’s fingers found the unruly curl beginning at the bottom of Blaine’s neck, not yet pinned down by product. He stroked absently as he read.    
  
Halfway through a chapter, he felt the telltale shift of a partner waking; the little bursts of motion, the louder, quicker, more shallow breaths. When Blaine’s eyes opened and found him, Paul made a point to remain motionless. He watched recognition visit Blaine's features and studied him for any potential disturbance, however hidden.   
  
He found none, and ventured a greeting. “Hey.”  
  
“Hey,” Blaine said back, mouth swollen with sleep but spreading into a smile. “What are you reading?”  
  
Paul’s wrist turned to expose the cover of his book - Red Storm Rising.  
  
Blaine looked incredulous. “Tom Clancy? Really?”  
  
“I’m told it’s what a man my age is supposed to be reading. I keep getting them as gifts.”  
  
With just a little more time to drag himself awake, Blaine might’ve been able to capitalize on the fodder Paul was giving him for mockery, but play was exhausting when he hadn’t gotten out of bed, yet. He gave up a laugh and stretched, pressing his face against the welcome of Paul’s chest, wide and warm. “Read to me?”  
  
The passage Paul selected had to do with flying. He didn’t hesitate - just spread the book open and gave his attention to it, voice firm and authoritative, like Blaine imagined the private tutors of royal children would sound.  
  
As he spoke, Blaine closed his eyes again and called up the memory of airplanes. The heavy tugging from the ground into empty, open space, the rustle-sigh of filtered oxygen, the twist of anxiety in his belly just before touchdown. He thought of silver wings screaming over him in the backyard as a child, and how he never really longed for flight like some of his friends did, like Kurt did, like Rachel. It simply happened to him. Travel, like everything else he’d ever experienced, was merely the result of privilege washing its waters over him while he lay still on the sand.  
  
He would have chosen to go flying with Paul.   
  
“Sounds nice,” he said when Paul stopped, drowsy with pleasure. “Do you fly much?”   
  
“Not much, these days. But I had my time to travel, sure.”   
  
“Ever go over the ocean?” Blaine had yet to go over the ocean. He often wondered how it would feel, the helpless surreality of coasting above a great blue nothing, nothing safe, nothing visible.  
  
“Once or twice - we went to Japan on our honeymoon, been to Italy a few times.”   
  
Blaine perked at the information, lifting up to throw all his newly awoken enthusiasm at the conversation. “I’ve always wanted to go there!”   
  
“Which one?,” Paul asked, combing through Blaine’s hair.  
  
“Both of them!”   
  
Paul laughed, loud and open, endeared beyond reason by whatever personality trait that was, whatever made Blaine _that way_. He remembered the way he’d said “thank you” after punishment for drinking and was overcome with fondness. Blaine hinted in his mannerisms and drunken confessions to being another kind of kid underneath, irrepressible and confident, happy without having to work for it.  
  
“You make me smile,” he told him, and Blaine answered the affection with a soft, dry kiss.    
  
They were quiet a moment, then, neither entirely certain what was meant to be decided this morning.  Blaine read Paul’s quiet as more conflicted than confused and netted their fingers together, wanting to touch more of him, wanting to relax him. He didn’t want to talk about it out loud - he didn’t want to give voice to his impulses or shine too bright a light on what they implied. But he wanted even less for Paul to suffer because of it.  
  
“I’m still here,” Blaine told him. “I’m not leaving.”  
  
“You think that’s smart?”  
  
“You don’t?”  
  
Paul took a breath, held it in, let it out. “I know it isn't. We seem to be developing a pattern of doing precisely the thing we should not be doing.”   
  
Blaine’s face was a mess of sincerity, expression so attentive and eager to please that it hurt Paul to look at.  “I don’t want you to feel that way,” he said, and Paul couldn’t help the fresh surge of arousal that wandered through him.  
  
Calling on the agreement they’d made before bed, he suggested, “Tell me why you’re here.”  
  
Blaine was no more ready to hear himself explain than he’d been the night before, but when presented to him as if it would leave a wound on Paul to be denied, he saw little choice in the matter.  
  
“I missed you.”  
  
“You could have called if you missed me. I want to know why you’re here. I don’t want to bury a landmine for either of us to stumble over later, Blaine - what we did, what I did. . . This time it was simply reckless, but the first time it was taking advantage. You knew that when you left here last month. What changed?”   
  
Blaine’s voice was its own ghost, pale and sickly, avoiding scrutiny. “Call it an epiphany. I had a bad night and all I wanted was to see you, because I knew you'd make me feel better. You’re good to me, Paul - sometimes you’re the only one. I just want that, once in awhile. Maybe I don’t think it’s so wrong anymore.”  
  
The professor in Paul, the teacher he had to become while raising a son on his own, perked at the suspicion of a breakthrough. He became more sturdy, more certain, as Blaine dropped his defenses. “Last time, I wasn’t so good to you.”   
  
Blaine twisted up onto his hips, suddenly urgent - he had to correct that misconception straight away. “Yes you were. You were. The person I was that night, he doesn't exist. I don't know him, I don't want to know him. I was drunk and stupid, and--." Both hands groped for a gesture that slipped free before finding its shape, and he had to rely on his clumsy tongue again. "I needed it, okay? What you did, I needed it. I just got scared.”  
  
“And you’re not, now?”   
  
Decisive, fast: “No.”  
  
“There’s a considerable amount of risk associated with the two of us being indulgent with one another. My son, your family - the idea of sneaking around to be together, doesn't that make you uncomfortable?”   
  
Anything other than a ‘yes’ would mean lying, and Blaine knew it. His indiscretions with Paul notwithstanding, he was already in love, and no longer safe behind the excuse of alcohol for being unfaithful. But he was too near the memory of falling asleep with Paul, of the change in the rhythm of his breathing, of how accessible his affection and time were regardless of circumstance - he didn’t want to bring something ugly to the conversation. Kurt was his problem, not Paul’s.  
  
“What's the difference? Maybe a little discomfort here or there isn't what's important. I just want to come here sometimes, and be with you. That's it. You obviously want the same thing, or you wouldn’t have let me stay here again.”  
  
"I do,” Paul admitted, though with some hesitation, “I do, that’s true, but not at the expense of – Blaine, I don’t want anything if it could be harmful to you. And that’s to say nothing of what it would mean about me. Even considering it--.”   
  
Blaine worked quickly to snuff out his concern, interrupting to insist, "It doesn’t have to mean anything about you. Don’t look at it from that perspective. Look at it this way: more often than not, you _do_ make me comfortable. More often than not, I make you - what?”   
  
“Drink,” Paul joked, and they laughed in unison.   
  
“I’m serious. Tell me.”   
  
Paul leaned against the headboard and sent a hand to lazily appreciate one of Blaine’s arms, mindlessly rubbing, drawing security out through his skin. “Useful. You make me feel useful.”   
  
Blaine looked up as if he could imagine what feeling useful looked like, picturing it on the ceiling above him in dreamy appreciation.   
  
“I like that. You make me feel comfortable, I make you feel useful - things we don’t get anywhere else right now. I know it’s not ideal, not for either of us, and probably not safe for you. But for now, I think comfortable and useful are worth it. Just once in awhile, to get a break. To recharge.”   
  
Paul nodded his head, resisting a years-old urge to chew his tongue for stress relief. Everything that needed saying sounded callous and toxic in his head. It was all he could do to spit sentences out and hope Blaine's dissection of them yielded positivity.  
  
“You need to understand, though - I’m not your boyfriend, Blaine. I can’t be. I’m 49, I have a son who knows you socially and a career, I can’t -- go out with you, take you places. It won’t be like that.”   
  
It shouldn’t have needed saying. It was mutually understood that the difference in age and the public nature of Paul’s job lent an incurable precariousness to their relationship.  Still, Blaine’s mood wilted to hear it out loud. There were occasions that idealism crept in uninvited.   
  
"What will it be like, then?"  
  
"Like it is now. Listening to you, helping you - correcting you, when you need it. That's what I can do. That's the function of a relationship I can provide. Is that . . . acceptable, to you?”   
  
Of course he wanted more, but more than that, he wanted  _something_.  He would rather take up scraps of a relationship than spend another second in the claustrophic frame of mind he'd occupied since they saw each other last.  
  
“Acceptable,” he said, cheerfully appropriating his father’s voice, speaking the way one attorney would to another in negotiation.  
  
Paul was visibly unburdened by Blaine’s compliance. “Good. That’s good.”   
  
“But once in awhile," Blaine offered, a shifty, sneaking smile widening across his face as he crawled up over Paul and planted all four limbs into the mattress around him, "Something a little more like this?”  
  
He'd never seen Blaine's flirtatiousness before. He observed it with dedication, scholarly in his cataloguing of the way it brightened him, in how it stoked awake the sense of play young men are meant to have but was often missing in Blaine when they talked.   
  
“A little,” he teased back, infinitely less energetic but just as wanting. Then he pulled Blaine down to lay across him, chest on chest, hip on hip, arms tangling together and fingertips reaching for partners. “When you behave.”   
  
A thick, joyful sound of gratification came from Blaine, and he spent the invitation on lazy, languid kisses that stopped them talking for a while.   
  
“So this,” he said, breaking the silence, “We’re okay, this is all okay?”  
  
For a minute, Paul could only breathe. It would’ve been an easier decision to make without Blaine in the room, without the warm, sweat-damp softness of his skin on display, but there he was, and all Paul could think was that he wished he still smoked. Cigarettes were invented for situations like this. When you couldn’t make a choice, or when the choice you wanted to make felt vile and stupid and wrong, being able to hold a bit of smoke in your lungs and then expel it felt so constructive.    
  
“When do you need to be home today?” he asked at last, just when Blaine considered prompting him with another comment.   
  
Blaine thought of Aaron in his chair. “I’m in no hurry.”  
  
“Get dressed,” Paul told him, thumbing his cheek. “I’ll make you breakfast. Stay and eat with me.”   
  
Good enough for now, Blaine thought. 


End file.
